


what does it matter how my heart breaks

by tuntekorpp



Series: everywhere at the end of time [3]
Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: Alcohol, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Everyone Needs Therapy, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, Kate is not a morning person, Original Character(s), POV Seth Gecko, Panic Attacks, Past Drug Use, Post-Amaru (From Dusk Till Dawn), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Seth doesn't know how to deal with anything, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Underage Drinking, kate is a brother magnet, mentions of suicidal thoughs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-18 04:46:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 42,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29112522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuntekorpp/pseuds/tuntekorpp
Summary: He turns around, back toward Kate, to make sure she’s following them. He’s not leaving her behind again. Not ever again. He did it once and he’s pretty sure he’ll feel guilty and have nightmares about it for the rest of his life. Rightfully so.But when he looks back at her, she’s not walking to them. She’s ripping at Amaru’s coat, struggling to get it off like it’s a living thing strangling her. Then she falls to her knees in the dirt and doesn’t move again.He’s running to her before he’s made the conscious decision to, practically sliding down to a stop in front of her.“Kate,” he says as he crouches down. Her head is thrown back toward the sky, her throat bare and vulnerable, her eyes closed. He wants to pull her to him, to cup her face between his hands and shield her with his entire body, protect her from the rest of the world.or, the events of "everywhere at the end of time" seen through Seth's eyes.
Relationships: Kate Fuller/Seth Gecko, Richard Gecko & Seth Gecko, Richard Gecko & Seth Gecko & Santanico Pandemonium | Kisa
Series: everywhere at the end of time [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2099808
Comments: 98
Kudos: 53





	1. Part I - 1

**Author's Note:**

> as i was writing "everywhere at the end of time" i wanted to write seth's pov of some scenes, wanted to explore the ways a same event can be perceived completely differently by two people, what was picked up on by Kate and what wasn't, what she imagined she was seeing in Seth versus what he was actually thinking at that moment.  
> at first i planned on writing these scenes like deleted scenes, a couple of one shots here and there. but the more i thought about it, the more it became clear that i actually had to rewrite the entirety of "everywhere at the end of time" through Seth's eyes. 
> 
> so here you go, i hope you'll enjoy and that it won't be too redundant.
> 
> as always, a thousand thanks to my dear betareader Fortysevens, the best enabler there is.
> 
> (the title of this fic, as always, comes from 'everywhere at the end of time', a musical project by the caretaker)

Kate is alive. It’s the only thing that goes through Seth’s mind now that it’s all over. She hugs Scott and lets him go and she’s _alive_. 

Richie takes him by the shoulders and starts talking to him but Seth doesn’t register a word of what his brother is saying because Kate is looking at him over her shoulder. He can’t help but smile and marvel at the fact that she’s here, alive, unpossessed, and not shooting his head off.

He glances at Richie and nods at whatever he said. He turns around, back toward Kate, to make sure she’s following them. He’s not leaving her behind again. Not ever again. He did it once and he’s pretty sure he’ll feel guilty and have nightmares about it for the rest of his life. Rightfully so.

But when he looks back at her, she’s not walking to them. She’s ripping at Amaru’s coat, struggling to get it off like it’s a living thing strangling her. Then she falls to her knees in the dirt and doesn’t move again.

He’s running to her before he’s made the conscious decision to, practically sliding down to a stop in front of her.

“Kate,” he says as he crouches down. Her head is thrown back toward the sky, her throat bare and vulnerable, her eyes closed. He wants to pull her to him, to cup her face between his hands and shield her with his entire body, protect her from the rest of the world. 

But he doesn’t touch her. He doesn’t feel worthy. He put her through Hell, he hurt her so much she shouldn’t even want to breathe the same air as him, much less have his hands on her.

She opens her eyes.

“Hey,” he breathes.

She looks at him and there’s no anger in her eyes. No hate. Just a deep exhaustion.

“It’s over?” she asks.

He nods. “Yeah. Yeah, it is,” he replies, and he can’t keep himself from reaching out and touching her face any longer. She doesn’t recoil, doesn’t slap his hands away. Instead, it looks like they’re anchoring her, grounding her in reality. He doesn’t want to think about it, but she looked the same after he and Tanner temporarily expelled Amaru from her body. Lost and confused until he touched her. He swallows around the knot in his throat, rubs his thumbs on her cheeks. “It’s over, Kate. She’s gone.”

She closes her eyes and slumps against him, as if hearing the confirmation was what she needed to finally let go of the last shred of fight she had in her. He pulls her against his chest, slides one arm under her knees and scoops her up in his arms.

“It’s gonna be okay,” he murmurs into her hair. 

He carefully sits her in the backseat of the car, feels Richie’s eyes on him the entire time, but Richie doesn’t say anything and just gets into the passenger seat.

Seth sits behind the wheel. He wasn’t bullshitting Carlos when he told him he had no fucking clue what he was going to do next. 

He really doesn’t. The only thing he knows is that he has to take care of Kate. Has to make sure she’s okay, and gets the life she deserves. That’s all he can be sure of at the moment.

“Let’s get outta here,” he mutters as he turns the key in the ignition.

He drives through the desert, reacts appropriately to whatever Richie says to him, but he can’t help but glance at Kate through the rearview mirror every few minutes. At first, she looks like she’s asleep, but her eyes snap open and he sees the panic and fear in them. Then he sees some of the tension leaving her and she focuses back on the world outside the car window. She glances at him in the mirror. He wants to ask her if she needs him to stop, if she’s going to be alright, if he can do anything to help. Her throat works and she gives him the tiniest nod. He wants to reach back and take her hand in his and feel her pulse under his fingers, but he settles for a nod back instead.

“We’re stopping here,” Seth says when he sees “vacancy” written in neon lights under a motel sign. Night has fallen and he wants to take a shower, wrap Kate in a blanket and hibernate for a week or two. He parks the car in front of the office.

He goes to open his door when Richie speaks up.

“Maybe let me do it,” he says. 

Seth looks at him flatly. “Why.”

"I might be part snake but at the moment I'm the most decent looking of us three.”

And yeah, okay, Richie has a point.

Seth sighs and gestures at him to go on. He turns around toward Kate once Richie is gone. She’s already looking at him, Amaru’s stupid makeup smudged around her eyes, red hair falling messily over her shoulders. He can’t wait for her to look like herself again. 

“How are you feeling?” he asks, because really, that’s the only thing he can think to ask at the moment.

She looks down at her hands, then back to his face. He sees the exhaustion in her, almost expects her to start shaking from all the horror and trauma she’s been through, to go into shock now that the adrenaline has burned off.

“I don’t know,” she replies, her voice a hollow rasp and it breaks his goddamn heart. He extends his arm between their seats and gently takes her hand in his.

“Okay,” he tells her. “We’ll figure it out.”

He doesn’t know how, doesn’t know when, but they will. He’s not gonna let her down ever again. She deserves more, more than anything he could ever give her. 

The ghost of a smile passes on her lips. He wants to tell her that he’ll do everything in his power to make sure she gets better, that he’ll spend the rest of his life trying to make amends for all the wrong he did to her. But words can’t solve this. He can’t just heal her wounds, visible or not, by talking. He feels useless and he fucking hates it. 

So he keeps rubbing the back of her hand with his thumb, until Richie comes back and directs him to their room. He parks the car at the back of the building and they get out of the car. They take their bags out of the trunk and he slams it shut, rounding the car to get to the motel room door. Kate is still planted next to the car, staring at the trunk, like she doesn’t know what she’s supposed to do next. Then she looks down at her hands. 

He exchanges a glance with Richie and he knows his brother noticed too. 

He brushes her arm and her eyes snap up to his.

“C’mon,” he says softly, nudging her toward the room.

He goes in first. It’s not the greatest motel he’s ever been to, but it’s far from the worst. The bedsheets look clean, there’s no obvious mold stains on the walls or the ceiling and he didn’t spot any cockroaches scurrying away when he opened the door. Small victories.

He drops his bag on the couch and stretches his neck on each side. It pops but it doesn’t relieve the tension in it. Now that the adrenaline has worn off, he can feel all the bruises and sore joints and the cuts and scrapes and he’s definitely getting too old for this shit.

“I’m gonna go find some food,” Richie says from the door. “Any requests?”

Seth shrugs without turning around. “I don’t know. Burger and fries. Whatever you find.”

“Alright. Kate?”

There’s no answer.

Seth glances at her over his shoulder and she’s just...staring at nothing, eyes empty, like she’s not even in the same room as they are. He fully turns around and walks to her, slowly. He doesn’t know if she even registers their presence, but it seems like any too fast movements could spook her.

He tries to catch her eyes and all he sees is panic.

“Kate?” Richie tries again, his tone careful and tentative. It’s a tone Seth knows all too well, the tone Richie employed with him when he was trying to have a conversation about Kate after her death, when he was making sure Seth was only getting blind drunk and not shooting up again.

She seems to come back to them, her eyes focusing on him. 

“I don’t know,” she says in a voice so low he’s not sure Richie hears it. 

He glances up at his brother and sees his own worry reflected in his eyes. 

“I’ll figure it out,” Richie says in a tone too reassuring and warm to be anything but a front to hide his concern.

Kate doesn’t look up. She’s staring at the carpet again. Richie raises an eyebrow at him and Seth nods. 

“Wait,” Kate says hurriedly just before Richie closes the door. “Can you—can you find me some hair dye?” she asks and her voice cracks in the middle and Seth just wants to punch something. Anything, as long as it could make her feel better.

“Yeah, sure,” Richie says before he leaves.

Kate doesn’t move. She doesn’t even look like she heard Richie, her eyes still cast downward. She starts shaking. 

“Hey,” he says, trying to snap her out of it. She starts to hyperventilate instead. “Hey, hey, Kate,” he tries again, keeping his voice as calm and soothing as he can. “Kate, it’s okay. You’re safe. It’s over. You’re safe.” 

She’s still not looking at him, still breathing erratically. He touches her cheek carefully and she startles. “Look at me, Kate. It’s gonna be okay. Look at me.” She finally does, eyes wide and terrified and full of tears. “Good,” he says, his hands still cradling her face, his thumbs rubbing over her cheekbones. “Now breathe.” She shakes her head. “Yes, you can.” He takes a deep breath, then lets it out. “C’mon, follow me.”

He does it again, his eyes never leaving hers. She takes a breath and she’s still shaking, but it’s better than her previous attempt. “Again. C’mon, you can do it. Breathe, Kate.” She does it again, and again, and again, until she’s not trembling as hard, not breathing as erratically. 

And she starts crying, heart-wrenching sobs raking through her entire body. He wraps his arms around her, pulling her to him and she clutches at his waistcoat like it’s a fucking lifeline. 

“It’s okay,” he murmurs against her temple. “It’s gonna be okay.” He’s not sure he believes his own words, but for her, he has to. There’s no other option. “You’re safe, I swear you’re safe now. It’s over.”

He keeps it up until she calms down. Then she lifts her head from his chest and takes a tiny step back, rubbing at her eyes and smudging that damn makeup all over her cheekbones. She has dirt on her face now too. He looks down at himself, takes stock of the state of his clothes, the blood, the ash, the dirt.

“Do you wanna shower first?” he asks her.

She shakes her head. “I’m gonna wait for the hair dye.”

“Okay.”

He catches her eyes again, trying to see if another panic attack is incoming, if he can go shower and leave her alone for five minutes and she’ll be okay. He won’t let her go through that alone. Not on his watch.

She gives him a little nod, permission to go. He nods back and steps away. He grabs a pair of sweatpants from his duffle and goes to the bathroom. He sheds his ruined clothes, puts his gun on top of the pile. His entire body is aching, his shoulder is stiff and sore when he removes his shirt, and even as he tries not to look at his reflection, he still catches a glance at several discolored spots all over his chest. He doesn’t want to know what his back looks like. 

The soap stings his skin in various places and the water takes too long to run clear from dirt and ash. When he shuts the shower off, blood still swirls down the drain. He dries himself off, puts on the sweatpants, tucks his gun in his waistband and opens the bathroom door.

Kate is sitting on the floor, her back to one of the beds, a plastic bag in her hands.

“Catch,” Richie’s voice comes in from the other side of the room. Seth barely has time to look up to catch the white pouch in one hand. “First aid kit. You might need a stitch or two,” Richie says as he motions at his own face. At the edge of his vision, Seth can see some red on top of his cheekbone, wet and slick. 

“Thanks.”

He sits heavily on the couch and opens the pouch. Antiseptic wipes, tweezers, needles and thread, scissors, butterfly stitches, ace bandages, cotton balls, rubbing alcohol. 

He lifts his head from the kit, sensing Kate’s eyes on him. “All yours,” he tells her with a nod toward the bathroom. She stands up, the plastic bag clutched between her fingers.

Richie sits next to him and grabs a couple of wipes. He opens one and wipes Seth’s cheekbone. Seth startles at the sting.

He glares at his brother. “For fuck sake, a little warning next time?” 

Richie rolls his eyes. “Don’t be a baby,” he replies flatly and goes back to cleaning the cut. Then he leans back and observes his work. “Yeah, you definitely need stitches,” he says.

Seth sighs, then motions to the needles and thread. “Go on with it then,” he says, resigned. There’s no numbing cream in the kit. It’s not the first time he’s been stitched up with no anaesthetic, but that doesn’t mean he has to like it.

Richie sanitizes and threads the needle and gets closer. “Alright, don’t move.”

Seth does his best to stay still as he feels the needle puncture his skin and tries not to think about how there’s a very sharp object being held way too close to his eye. 

The bathroom door opens. Kate is standing there, the skin of her face red and angry, but clean of Amaru’s stupid makeup. 

“Any of you have scissors?” she asks in a small voice. “I need to cut this fucking hair.”

“There’s a second pair in the kit,” Richie calmly answers before Seth can offer to do it for her. She walks to them and rummages through the mess. She gets the scissors and goes back to the bathroom and Seth feels his anxiety spiking at the thought of her alone in a room with a potential weapon. He knows rationally that Amaru is gone, but he can’t help but worry that maybe the queen bitch is still there, lurking, waiting for the right moment to possess Kate again. Locked in a bathroom with scissors would be the perfect time.

“Think she’s gonna be alright?” Richie asks as he cuts the thread.

Seth tears his eyes away from the bathroom door and glances at him. “Yeah,” he replies, hoarsely. “Gonna make sure of it.”

The look Richie gives him is indecipherable. Then he grabs another antiseptic wipe and carefully cleans his stitches again. He takes a look at Seth’s other injuries, applies a row of butterfly stitches to his back and lets him deal with the rest. 

“I got you food, by the way,” Richie says, pointing at the greasy bag on the table.

Seth stands up and winces. He brings a hand to his side and carefully probes at his ribs. Sore, bruised, but not broken. He takes an undershirt and a henley from his duffle and puts them on, then he sits at the table. He takes his gun out of his waistband and puts it down in front of him. He should clean it. 

“Eat while it’s still warm,” Richie says from the bed. Seth looks up from his gun. Richie is eating his burger and drinking horchata from a bright pink cup, watching some kitschy telenovela on the tv. 

Seth starts with the fries, glancing at the bathroom door every few seconds. There’s no sound coming from it, and he feels like a creep focusing that hard on the bathroom while a girl is in it, but it’s too damn silent. He’s two seconds away from standing up to go knock on the door when he hears the shower turn on.

He feels some tension seep away from him.

He finishes his fries and grabs the burger. He’s not that hungry, even though he knows he should be. He wonders if it’s the nerves, the exhaustion, or just a mix of everything that has happened. He takes a bite out of his burger. He has to eat. Matanzas was anything but a walk in the park. He’s got knocked around so much he’s surprised he’s not throwing up from a concussion, he’s lost blood, he’s _given_ blood. 

The food in his mouth has no taste, but he swallows it anyway.

The bathroom door opens and Kate steps out. She looks frail in the too big sweatpants and her tank top, but gone is the wild red hair, the black makeup. Her hair is back to brown, chopped off unevenly above her shoulders, shorter than he’s ever seen it. She gives a small smile to Richie and comes to the table. She sits in the other chair and folds her knees against her chest. 

He reaches into the paper bag and takes out her burger and the last portion of fries. She tentatively takes the fries, picking them one by one and nibbling on them slowly, her eyes on the table. 

She still has some pink blotches on her face where she’s scrubbed the makeup off, but the rest of her skin is pale, paler than she was before. He spots the bruise on her arm where Scott stuck the blood transfusion line.

She takes the second horchata cup from the bag and sips on it.

“Can you redo my bandages?” she asks. 

He stops chewing. The bandages around her wrists are wet, but the blood stains are dark, not bright and fresh. Images of her lying motionless on the floor of the church in a pool of her own blood flash in his mind. He swallows his last bite and focuses on her, now.

“Yeah,” he replies thickly, wiping his hands and mouth on a paper napkin.

He gets up, washes his hands in the bathroom and comes back to the table with the first aid kit. She stretches her arms across the table. Too pale. Too skinny. He clenches his jaw and starts unwrapping her wrists. He tries to be as gentle and careful as possible, but she winces anyway. He freezes and glances up at her, waiting. She catches his eyes and nods. He peels the last of the bandage away, trying not to let the sight of the gauze stuck in the wound get to him. She closes her eyes and becomes impossibly paler.

“Breathe,” he tells her, his thumb stroking the uninjured side of her wrist, trying to anchor her and keep her from fainting or throwing up. She gives him another tiny nod and inhales deeply through her nose, then exhales through her mouth. It’s shaky but she doesn’t hyperventilate again. 

He sees her swallowing, then she opens her eyes. “Okay,” she murmurs, and he doesn’t know if she’s talking to him or to herself.

He takes an antiseptic wipe and cleans the slits carefully. She doesn’t wince or recoil at the sting, just keeps breathing evenly. Rationally, he knows that this type of incision should be stitched, but when he looks at them, they’re not as deep as they should be to have made her bleed out like that, they’re almost shallow, as if they have already started to heal over. He knows it’s impossible, that Kate isn’t a culebra, that this type of fast healing doesn’t exist in humans. And yet, they only really need butterfly stitches. 

“Thank you,” she says once he’s done wrapping her wrists in fresh bandages. Then she crosses her arms on top of her knees and leans her head on them. He sees the wound on her arm, the one he had fucking duct taped in the tunnels. It’s not bleeding, but this one hasn’t started healing like her wrists. He touches her shoulder to turn her arm more toward him and she startles a little, but she doesn’t try to move away from him. She just watches him apply the antiseptic and tape a square of gauze over it.

“Thanks,” she repeats softly.

He glances up at her and his hand lingers on her arm, even though he wants to tell her he doesn’t deserve her gratitude, that he’s just trying to repair what he has broken. 

Richie eats the last burger but goes out to get a ‘proper meal’ as he calls it.

Seth just shrugs and grabs his gun, takes it apart, cleans it, oils it, puts it back together. He doesn’t even register what his hands are doing, everything more muscle memory than conscious decision at this point. He pushes away the images his brain conjures, the bad trip in Mexico, trying and failing to put the gun back together, smearing blood on his face, hallucinating Kate, the way she said _you’re a mess_ and _I could never leave you_ and it wasn’t her, he knows that, but it was her voice and her hands on his face and he really thought he was dying and sometimes he wonders if it wouldn’t have been better for everyone else if he had. He buries the thought. It doesn’t matter anymore. People are dead because of him, but Kate is here, alive, and he’ll stay by her side as long as she’ll have him. 

“You should try to sleep,” he says after long minutes of silence, neither of them moving from their chairs.

She glances up. She looks terrified, but she nods and stands up. She doesn’t look very steady when she walks to the bed, but she doesn’t sway too much either, and then she slips under the sheet, rolling on her side folded in on herself. She looks tiny in the middle of the bed. 

“Do you want me to turn the light off?” he asks.

“No,” she says, her voice hoarse.

She closes her eyes and he decides that watching her would be too creepy, his paranoia be damned. He cleans the greasy remnants of their dinner, puts away his gun cleaning supplies. He feels restless. Usually, he would work out the excess energy, but there’s not a damn chance his body will let him tonight. He sees Richie outside, walking toward their room. 

He goes out to meet him.

“How’s she?” Richie asks.

“Sleeping.”

Richie grunts and takes a flask out of his jacket. Tequila. The cheap kind.

“Want some?” he asks. 

Seth takes it. “Got some cigarettes?”

Richie snorts but takes a pack from his breast pocket. “Keep it.”

Then he goes inside their room. 

Seth sits on a chair left in front of their room. He lights a cigarette and takes a swig of tequila. 

He drinks and tries not to think, watching the cars pass by on the highway on the other side of the parking lot. He should probably go to sleep. They haven’t talked about it yet, but they’re probably going back to Jed’s and that’s miles from where they are right now. He has some driving to do in the morning.

The door opens behind him and he expects his brother but it’s Kate who stands at the threshold. She glances at the flask dangling from his fingers, closes the door, and sits down on the ground next to him.

“Can I have some?” she asks.

He passes her the bottle. She takes a swig, grimaces, then takes another one. She looks slightly more like herself than before. More present. 

“Thought you went to sleep,” he says.

She lets out a tiny humorless laugh. “Yeah,” she says, before taking another drink.

She doesn’t need to tell him why she’s up. Anyone would be afraid to sleep after going through half of what she’s been through. She gives him the bottle back, draws her knees against her chest.

“Aren’t you going to sleep?” she asks.

He sighs. “In a minute.”

She leans her chin on top of her crossed arms and watches the highway. 

She shivers.

“You cold?”

She shrugs. “A bit.”

He could tell her to go back inside, where it’s warm. But the thing is, now that she’s here, now that he can see her, he doesn’t want to let her out of his sight again. He might be a miserable asshole who would gladly take a bullet or five for her, but he’s also a selfish asshole who wants to have her next to him. 

So he takes off his henley and holds it out to her. She doesn’t seem put off by that. She slips it on, her tiny frame swallowed by the fabric, and tugs the sleeves over her hands. He wants to take her in his arms, make sure she’s not cold anymore. He wants to sit down close to her, to touch her, to make sure she’s not a figment of his imagination. He’s lived in a nightmare for so long he’s having a hard time trusting that this moment here is the reality.

He knocks back the rest of the tequila and stands up from his chair. Then he sits down next to her. She leans her head against his shoulder and she’s solid and real and he’s so relieved he could fucking cry. He wraps an arm around her and presses his lips against the top of her head. She smells of shampoo, nothing like the sulphur and blood scent that seemed to always accompany Amaru.

“I missed you,” she whispers and he freezes. 

He wants to yell. It isn’t fair that someone like her missed someone like him. She should have never met him or anyone like him, let alone gotten close enough to miss his presence in her life. His arm tightens around her and he leans his cheek against her head.

“I’m sorry, Kate. For everything.”

He says it because it needs to be said, because he needs her to know. He’s not expecting anything. Not forgiveness, not absolution, not redemption. He doesn’t deserve any of it. But she has to know. He doesn’t care if she tells him that she doesn’t forgive him, again. She should be running away from him, shooting him, not finding comfort in his arms. 

“I forgive you,” she says. 

He has to squeeze his eyes shut to keep himself from crying. His heart hammers in his chest, like it wants to burst out of it, too many emotions battling inside of him to be able to withstand it. 

“You don’t have to,” he croaks. 

She leans away from him and he thinks that she’s finally seen reason, that she’s finally realized she’s better off without him. But she only leans as far as she needs to look at him in the eye. She makes no move to shrug off his arm, to stand up and run away. 

“I know,” she says softly. “But I do.”

She’s breaking his heart and he didn’t know it could even break further than it already has. He pulls her to him, slotting his head against her neck, and she’s holding onto him too. He doesn’t deserve it. He doesn’t deserve any of this, but if it’s what she needs, then goddammit he’s going to give it to her.

He wishes they could stay like that, holding onto each other like they’re trying to mend each other’s tears and cracks, but the night gets colder and he feels her goosebumps under his fingers.

“You ready to go back inside?” he asks softly.

She feels her nod against him. He stands up and holds out a hand to her. She takes it and gets to her feet, follows him inside.

She goes back to her bed and he sits heavily on the couch.

“What are you doing?” she asks in a hushed voice.

He frowns then raises an eyebrow. “Going to sleep?”

She stares at him like he’s the biggest moron on Earth and it should annoy him but she looks so much like the Kate he lived with for three months in Mexico that it doesn’t. He’s been on the receiving end of that look enough times to know that whatever she’s saying next, he better not argue against it. 

“You’re not sleeping on that.”

He glances at the other bed, occupied by a starfishing Richie, then back to her. 

“Kate,” he says, not really knowing how to explain to her that he’ll sleep even worse if he tries to share with Richie than if he stays on the couch. His brother has been known to punch people in his sleep and Seth has woken up bruised every time they’ve been forced to share, even as kids.

“C’mon,” she says. “It’s not like it’s the first time we shared.”

He blinks. She wants them to share. And yeah, okay, technically in Mexico they had a single bed more often than not because they were perpetually broke, but he doesn’t really remember sharing with her, his mind clouded either by drugs, alcohol, blood loss, a concussion, or all of the above. 

But right now, she’s looking at him like she needs him to be close, and he knows that look, the look of someone who’s terrified of their own mind, of what sleep can bring. He knows it well, because he’s been seeing it in the mirror ever since she died at the bloodwell. 

So he turns off the light and goes to the other side of her bed. She slips under the blankets, settling again in fetal position, facing toward the center of the bed. He leans on his side, one hand under the pillow, the other resting between them.

“I’m scared,” she says, her eyes on his hand.

“I know.” He touches her shoulder lightly, not pulling her to him, just a way to anchor her in reality. She unfolds her legs and scoots closer to him, until she can slot her head under his chin. His arm wraps up against her entirely. He starts rubbing circles on her back. 

“Is this okay?” she mumbles almost shyly against his chest. 

He tightens his hold on her and drops a kiss onto her hair. “Yeah. Go to sleep, Kate.”

He keeps stroking her back until her breathing evens out. Then he waits some more, on alert for any sign of nightmares. When there’s none, he finally allows himself to close his eyes.

[ ](https://tuntematonkorppi.tumblr.com/post/641850738707972096/what-does-it-matter-how-my-heart-breaks-part-i)


	2. Part I - 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’s halfway through his second glass when Richie sits next to him.  
> “Wasn’t expecting to see you here tonight, brother,” he says.  
> Seth raises an eyebrow. “Where the fuck should I be,” he asks flatly.  
> Richie gestures to Luisa, the other bartender working tonight, and she gives him a bottle of bourbon and a glass.  
> “With Kate?” Richie replies, pouring himself a glass. “Making sure she’s alright?"  
> Seth finishes his Old Fashioned, takes the bourbon from Richie and fills his glass up again. “She needed some space,” he mutters and knocks back his drink in one go.  
> “Did she actually tell you that or is this your overblown martyr complex talking?”

Seth wakes up on his stomach, his arm extended to the other side of the bed. The _empty_ other side. He sits up with a jerk, scanning the room around him. 

“She’s right outside,” Richie says before panic can fully take a hold of him.

Seth lets out a sigh and wills his heart to calm the fuck down. He goes to the bathroom, changes into a pair of jeans and a shirt that isn’t covered in ash or blood and tucks his gun in his waistband. He spots his spare gloves at the bottom of his duffle bag. He almost grabs them out of habit, his hand stilling millimeters from the leather. Amaru is in pieces back in Xibalba. Kate is free. He doesn’t need the gloves anymore. 

He closes his duffle and steps outside.

Kate is on the chair, her legs folded up against herself like a shield. She’s still wearing his shirt.

He stretches and can’t hold back a yawn. “Breakfast?” he asks. She nods. “D’you wanna go out or should I just bring it here?”

“Let me put on my shoes,” she replies.

He hears her talk briefly with Richie inside.

“Richie wants horchata and sweet potato fries,” she tells him when they’re walking to the car.

“Of course he does,” Seth mutters. 

Richie is lucky to be a culebra, otherwise he would have probably developed a serious case of diabetes, with all the sugar he drinks.

Seth drives to a diner not too far from the motel, and Kate stays silent the entire time. He parks the car and kills the engine, and when he turns to her, she’s staring at the building, too still and too emotionless for it to be a good sign. 

He glances at the diner, then back at her. “I can just go order and bring everything back here,” he offers.

She looks down at her hands. “No. It’s okay. I’m gonna have to face civilization again at some point, right?” she says, her eyes fleeting up briefly to his.

He can see her anxiety, the panic she’s trying so hard to keep under the surface. But he also sees her resolve, her determination not to let Amaru fuck up her life even more.

“If at any moment you wanna leave, just say the word and we’ll be out of there, alright?” he tells her.

She gives him a little nod. “Okay.”

He stays close to her as they walk to the diner, close enough that their arms brush and it makes him want to hold her against him. She’s too damn pale, too damn thin. She looks like the next gust of wind could knock her off her feet.

He holds the door open for her, then nudges her to a table in a deserted corner of the restaurant.

The waitress comes to their table and fills their mugs with coffee. Then she asks if they already know what they want to eat and Seth sees Kate start to quietly panic. It’s not the same thing, but he remembers the first day after Richie busted him out of prison. Suddenly he had to make choices for himself that he hadn’t had to make in years. When to eat. What to eat. What to wear. The number of things he could choose for himself was suddenly so overwhelming. Obviously he was fucking ecstatic about not being locked up in a cell anymore, but the prospect of having his life entirely to himself again was fucking terrifying. 

Seth turns to the waitress and offers her his most charming smile. “Eggs and bacon for me and blueberry pancakes for her, please,” he asks, remembering the way Kate had smiled that time he had brought blueberry pancakes back to their room for breakfast, somewhere near Monterrey. 

The waitress smiles back. “Comin’ right up,” she says and walks away.

He drops the smile and faces Kate again. She’s staring at the table, but at least she’s not hyperventilating. 

“Kate?” he says. He touches her forearm lightly. She looks up, staring at him like she’s not sure where she is. “Do you wanna go?”

She swallows, shakes her head. “No. I’m okay. It’s alright,” she says in a strained voice and he knows she’s not okay. She’s too shaky, her eyes fleeting from his face to the napkin holder, to a point behind him, back to his face. 

She’s not okay, but if she wants to stay, then they’ll stay. It’s her choice. It will always be her choice. 

“I got you blueberry pancakes,” he tells her. He hopes he didn’t mess up, that his memories weren’t wrong. It was before he had started shooting up seriously, but drugs fuck everything up.

She gives him a tiny smile. “Thank you.”

He takes back his hand and wraps it around his mug. He watches her pour sugar and cream into hers, take a sip. She looks surprised somehow, like she had forgotten the taste. He hasn’t asked what she remembers from her time being possessed. He doesn’t know if he ever will, doesn’t want to open up a wound that hasn’t even started healing, but he wonders how Amaru was taking care of her body, if she was eating, if she was sleeping. He sees the dark circles under Kate’s eyes and the way her collarbones jut out from under his henley and he wants to tear the queen bitch apart all over again. 

The waitress comes back and puts down their plates in front of them. Kate drenches her pancakes in syrup, then cuts them into tiny portions that she picks one by one, pushing them around as she chews slowly, washing them down with more coffee. 

She’s barely halfway done by the time he empties his plate.

“What’s the plan?” she asks.

He picks up his newly refilled mug and takes a sip. “The plan?”

“Yeah.”

He leans against the back of the booth. They’re still in charge of Jacknife Jed’s and there’s no way in Hell Richie is going to let that go. They have nowhere else to go anyway, to be honest.

“Go back to Jacknife Jed’s, I guess.”

She frowns. “What’s that?”

He freezes. Of course she doesn’t know. How could she? They took over right after she got fucking murdered by Carlos. He clenches his jaw but swallows his anger at himself and explains to her what Jed’s is, how they’ve been running it since Kisa killed Malvado. 

She listens to him, not looking at him, but nodding from time to time. She’s still pushing her pieces of pancake around in her plate, but doesn’t eat any more. 

He finishes his coffee. “You wanna go?” 

She glances at him, then at her plate. “Yeah.”

He pays for their food, leaves a generous tip, then steers Kate toward the exit of the diner. 

“Wait,” she says as they come close to the door. “Richie’s food.”

He huffs a laugh but turns back around. “What was it again?” he asks as he leans against the counter. 

She slides up next to him. “Sweet potato fries and horchata.”

She knocks her shoulder into his and offers him a tiny smile. He smiles back. 

Kate holds onto the cup and the paperbag as he drives them back to the motel. She’s silent, but she doesn’t look like she’s zoning out the way she was the day before, or like she’s panicking like in the diner. If Seth ignores the stitches pulling at his cheekbone, her too short hair, and the total absence of withdrawal symptoms in his body, it feels as if they’re back in Mexico, driving from town to town and hitting all the shittiest places, comfortable with each other despite everything. 

He’s glad it’s not Mexico anymore, glad he’s clean, glad it doesn’t feel like he’s being ripped apart and burned alive every time he thinks about his brother, but still, he misses one thing from Mexico: the fact that he hadn’t left her yet. 

Richie grabs his food happily and Seth starts packing their bags while Kate takes another shower. 

“I called Marney, let him know we’re coming back,” Richie says with his mouth full of fries.

Seth zips a duffle bag close and glances up at him. “What did he say?”

“‘Thank fuck’ and something about Kalinda panicking about the bar.”

Seth raises an eyebrow. “That’s reassuring.”

“Well at least the bar is still standing.”

Kate exits the bathroom. Seth points at the duffle he hasn’t closed yet. “There’s room in that one for your stuff,” he tells her. She looks down at the clothes and the plastic bag in her hands, then nods and dumps them in the bag. 

They get back on the road and she sits in the passenger seat while Richie lies down in the back. Seth can’t keep himself from glancing at her every few minutes. At first she’s just watching the road, and she still doesn’t say anything, and he’s okay with that. He’d rather any of the conversations he truly wants to have with her happen without his brother as an audience. 

After a while, she leans her head against the window and closes her eyes. He’s not sure she’s sleeping, but she seems almost peaceful, serene, and it’s good enough for him.

They arrive at Jed’s late in the afternoon. Seth drops Richie in front of the bar, then he drives around the back and parks the car near their living quarters. Kate follows him inside and he shows her the office before leading her to his room.

“You can stay here ‘til we set up your own,” he says. He shows her the bathroom and the closet, and she’s still not talking. She’s responsive, nodding and looking at whatever he’s pointing to, until she isn’t. She stares at a spot between his shoes and the bathroom door and her eyes almost look glazed over, like she’s not here anymore.

“Kate,” he calls but nothing changes. “Kate?” he tries again and this time she glances up, but there’s a look in her eyes that makes him think that maybe she’s not sure where she is, a look that speaks of confusion and always that goddamn fear. 

He steps closer, slowly in case she doesn’t want him near her, but she doesn’t back away. Then he lifts his hands to each side of her face, still careful, still expecting her to recoil from him at any second. She doesn’t, leans into his hands instead, closing her eyes when his fingers meet her skin like it’s a relief. Seth tries not to feel content about it. He’s aware of the concept of touch starvation. When was the last time someone touched her without intending to harm her, before Amaru? He doesn’t want to imagine her body being touched while Amaru was in it, blocks the very thought of it, but he knows that Kate herself must be touch-starved and that it could be anyone’s hands cradling her face and bringing her the same relief. It has nothing to do with him. 

She opens her eyes and she looks more anchored, but he still feels like he could be doing more, like he’s not doing enough, like he _isn’t_ enough.

“Talk to me,” he says and it feels like begging but he doesn’t care.

Her hands wrap around his wrists and he sees a flash of terror in her eyes, but it’s gone so quickly he can’t be sure it was there in the first place.

“Are you—are you clean?” she asks him and he feels his guilt swallow him whole.

“Yeah. Yeah, Kate, I am,” he manages to reply.

Her hands leave his wrist and for a fraction of second he thinks she’s going to step away and ask him to leave her alone, but instead she hugs him, her face pressed against his chest and her arms tight around his waist.

“Good,” she says simply. 

He hugs her back and presses his lips on top of her head. “I’m sorry I made you go through that,” he says with his heart in his throat.

“It’s in the past,” she replies.

He inhales deeply to keep himself from breaking down in tears right then and there. She presses her head against his chest and he wonders yet again why in the goddamn hell she would want him close. 

He clears his throat. “Do you wanna eat something?”

She shakes her head and she still doesn’t move from his embrace. And because Seth is nothing but a miserable asshole, he can’t help but ask another question even though he feels that she’s perfectly content to just stay here. 

“You want a tour of the place?”

She tenses in his arms and steps away and Seth pretends he doesn’t want to pull her right back to him. 

“I’m gonna get some sleep,” she says and she all but flees to the bathroom, keeping her head down like she needs to avoid his eyes. 

The bathroom door closes behind her and the sound of it feels like it stabs him in the ribs. He sighs and he knows he just fucked up. He’s not sure how, because there’s simply too many options and it could be one of them or all of them and he’s way too fucking sober to consider them all. 

He leaves the room, quietly closing the door behind him. 

He goes to the bar, nodding at people and returning their greetings as he walks across the entire compound. Kalinda looks relieved to see him. He wonders how bad Marney was at managing the operation if she’s that happy to see _him_. Then he decides that it’s enough self pity for the rest of the night and he orders an Old Fashioned. 

He’s halfway through his second glass when Richie sits next to him. 

“Wasn’t expecting to see you here tonight, brother,” he says.

Seth raises an eyebrow. “Where the fuck should I be,” he asks flatly. 

Richie gestures to Luisa, the other bartender working tonight, and she gives him a bottle of bourbon and a glass. 

“With Kate?” Richie replies, pouring himself a glass. “Making sure she’s alright?”

Seth finishes his Old Fashioned, takes the bourbon from Richie and fills his glass up again. “She needed some space,” he mutters and knocks back his drink in one go.

“Did she actually tell you that or is this your overblown martyr complex talking?”

Seth glares at his brother. “Using big words doesn’t make you right, Richard,” he says before standing up from his stool and walking away.

He knows he won’t be able to sleep for a while and Richie is probably going to stay at the bar for the entire night, so the office is the only logical place to go. Besides, he’s going to have to look at the books at some point, and it might as well be now. 

He’s trying to make sense of this past month’s numbers when the door opens without a knock.

“I swear to fuck, Richard, I’m—” He stops himself when he looks up and it’s not Richie in the doorway, but Kate, one of his hoodies hanging from her shoulders and barely covering the top of her naked legs. “Kate,” he says. He sounds winded even to his own ears, like he just got punched in the sternum. 

“Hey,” she replies, stepping into the room and walking to the couch. 

“That’s my hoodie,” he says, because right this second it’s the only thing he can actually focus on.

She looks down at herself, like she had forgotten what she was wearing and needs the reminder, and shrugs. “I was cold.”

He rubs at the bottom of his face. “We really need to get you more fucking clothes,” he mumbles. 

She sits on the couch, one leg folded under her. “What are you doing?”

He looks down at the desk, at the accounting books open in front of him. “Reviewing our books,” he says even though he couldn’t tell her anything more about it at the moment. The only thing in his mind is how she looks bundled in his hoodie, her hair tousled by sleep, fiddling with the edge of a sleeve. He clears his throat. “I need to know what the fuck happened when we were, uh, away.”

She glances at him and nods. He stands up before he can stop himself, but doesn’t go sit on the couch next to her like he’s dying to. Instead, he rounds the desk and leans against it like it was always what he wanted to do. He grips the edge of the desk and lets his head hang heavily over his chest. What the fuck is he doing? 

He looks at her. 

“Did you get some sleep?” 

She glances at him again, bites her lip, fidgeting with her sleeves, twisting and stretching the hem between her fingers. “A bit. I don’t know,” she says in a low voice and shrugs.

He knows the look too well. “Nightmares?” he asks softly.

She nods slowly. “I can still hear her. I hear her laughing,” she says and her voice is even lower than before, barely a whisper, like she’s afraid speaking the words out loud will make them real. “I hear the screams of all the people I killed—”

He’s kneeling directly in front of her and taking her face in his hands before he realizes it. Her eyes widen and he almost feels bad about startling her, but he can’t let her think that. Not now, not ever. 

“Hey, no. Stop. You didn’t kill them. She did. Not you,” he tells her with all the strength he can muster, because she has to believe him. She has to believe it. She’s not responsible for the horror Amaru wrought. He can’t let her bear the burden of that. It’s not hers to bear and it never will be. 

Her eyes don’t leave his, but they fill up with tears. “It feels like it was me,” she says and her voice cracks. “I don’t feel the difference, Seth. I was there and I saw everything. I felt everything,” she finishes, tears rolling down her cheeks. 

He sits next to her, then gently wraps his arms around her and pulls her against him. She grasps his shirt and cries against his chest.

“It wasn’t you,” he murmurs against her hair. “It wasn’t you.”

He repeats it like a prayer and he’s not even sure she hears him, but he keeps saying it over and over again, until she’s not crying anymore. The sobbing calms down and her breathing becomes less shaky, but he doesn’t move away. 

“Do you want to go back to bed?” he asks. 

She shakes her head, then throws her legs over his and presses closer to his chest. 

“Can we stay like this?” she asks as if he would ever not want her close. Her fingers are light on his arms, tracing the flames of his tattoo like they’re the different pathways in a labyrinth. 

He tightens his arms around her. “Yeah.”

She leans her head against his shoulder. They don’t talk, but the silence is comfortable, like a blanket covering them. The movements of her fingers slow down, then stop entirely, her breathing gets deeper and he feels her melt completely against him. He waits a bit longer before sliding an arm under her knees, making sure her neck isn’t bent awkwardly and lifts her in his arms.

He carries her to the bedroom and carefully deposits her in the bed. She rolls on her side. He pulls back the covers over her, tucking them around her. He pushes her hair back behind her ear and maybe his fingers linger a beat too long against her neck, feeling her pulse under her skin.

He straightens up, fully intent on sleeping on the office’s couch, but her voice stops him before he even starts to move toward the door.

“Seth,” she mumbles and he’s not sure she’s really conscious or not.

“I’m here, Princess,” he says, leaning closer. 

She blinks a couple of times. “Stay.”

His heart misses a beat. He swallows and clears his throat. “I’ll just be in the office.”

Her hand fumbles under the covers until it pokes out and grabs his. “Stay,” she repeats. “Please.”

His heart is ready to burst out of his chest, but he manages to keep his voice still. “Okay. Yeah, okay.”

Her grip slackens around his hand. He walks to the other side of the bed and sits on the edge. He unlaces his boots, removes his jeans, his socks and his shirt. The sheets on his side are cold when he gets in. He settles on his side, facing Kate’s back, a good ten inches between them.

“Good night, Princess.”

He wakes up with Kate plastered against him, her head against his chin, one arm between them and the other around his hips, her legs tangled in his. Her face is free of anguish or terror and he doesn’t want to risk waking her up, but he’s also painfully aware of his morning erection and the last thing he wants is for her to wake up to _that._

He carefully removes her arm from around him, slowly slides his legs to the other side of the bed, freezing when the tiniest sound comes from her, then moving again when it doesn’t look like she’s going to wake up. 

He gets out of bed and locks himself in the bathroom. He doesn’t wait for the water to warm up and steps directly under the cold spray of the shower.

He gets dressed and goes to the office. Richie is already there, looking at the books Seth was trying to review the night before. 

“Morning. How was your night?” Richie asks with a smirk. 

Seth glares at him. “What do you think of the numbers?” he asks instead of shooting his brother in the throat.

Richie shrugs. “Could’ve been worse.”

Seth spends the next few days getting into a new routine, all thanks to his brother’s genius plan to make sure Jed’s can survive now that there are no more Lords and no collecting to do anymore. There’s shipments to survey, product to order in and product to send out, culebras to contact and work relationships to reinstate. 

He asks Luisa to find clothes for Kate and he pushes all of his stuff to one side of the closet so she can have the other. He does his best to let her have her space, to not smother her, but it’s hard not to worry when he sees her barely eating. He watches her dismantle and clean guns obsessively, sees his own neurosis reflected in her and he has to go smash his knuckles against a punching bag until they’re bleeding to calm down. 

Every night he takes the first shift at the bar then goes to the office, and every night, like clockwork, she joins him there. He sees the remnants of her nightmares in the tense lines of her mouth, the way she has a hard time looking at him in the eye for too long, the shaking of her hands. 

Sometimes he’s at his desk and she sits on the couch, her knees folded against her, and he tells her about the bar and when he’s done working he sits down next to her and she leans against him until she falls asleep again.

Sometimes he’s already on the couch, going over reports and spreadsheets, and she tucks herself against him and lets him work in silence. 

Sometimes she asks him questions, but more often than not, she lets him do the talking. 

Sometimes, when her nightmares have been really bad and she finds him at the desk, she doesn’t wait for him to finish working and come over to the couch. Instead, she sits on his lap and curls into a ball, hides her face in the crook of his neck, holding onto him like he’s a goddamn anchor. When that happens, he can only hold onto her right back, rubbing her back soothingly as he waits for her shaking to subside. 

Sometimes she falls asleep and he carries her back to the bedroom. Sometimes she manages to stagger back there in a state of half consciousness. 

After the first couple of nights, she doesn’t have to ask him to stay anymore.

He always falls asleep after her, firmly on his side of the bed, not one inch of him touching her. He always wakes up before her, still on his side of the bed, but with Kate snuggled against him like she’s trying to burrow into his chest. 

Seth wants to believe that she’s getting better, that she’s at least sleeping more, but there’s only so much time he can spend in denial. 

The truth is that she’s still not eating much, still not talking much. She might be getting more sleep, but the dark circles under her eyes stay where they are, and he doesn’t know what else he can do for her. It feels like she’s both drained of energy and ready to explode at the same time, a too calm moment before the worst of a storm, like she’s overdue for a monumental nervous breakdown. 

He tries not to dwell on it too much, but she’s always cold to the touch and he starts to wonder if they overlooked something, if she lost a part of herself, maybe when Amaru bled her out, maybe when she walked into Xibalba and came back out. Maybe it was too easy, bringing her back, having her walk out of literal Hell with his brother in tow like it was nothing. Maybe she left something behind in Matanzas and she’ll never get it back and he’s failed her again. 

Their rhythms get weird, adapting more and more to culebra hours, going to sleep after the sunrise, waking up just before sunset. 

She likes to go outside to watch the sunrise. Sometimes he joins her and they watch the sky turn pink and light gold and pale blue together. She doesn’t say much, but she seems to like it when he tells her about his childhood with Eddie or their successful jobs. 

He knows she’s not alright, far from it, but all he can do is be there for her as long as she wants him to be, so he is, and he waits. 

He’s in the office with Richie, trying to figure out the logistics of a new shipment when she comes in. 

“I’m leaving,” she tells them. Her voice is steady, emotionless. Her face doesn’t betray anything either.

It feels like someone shoved an icepick between his ribs and twisted, but he doesn’t let it show. It’s useless, he can see it in her. She made her choice, and her choice is to get away from them. He can’t blame her. A part of him, the less selfish, less fucked up part, was hoping she would finally realize that she deserves better than them, that they can’t be and will never be good enough for her. 

“What do you mean you’re leaving?” Richie says like he can’t believe it. 

Richie was always the more optimistic out of the two of them. They never truly talked about it, but Seth knows his brother was just expecting her to get better with time. He knows Richie thinks she belongs with them. 

“I can’t stay here,” Kate says and Seth can hear the _with you_ even if she doesn’t speak the words out loud. 

Richie protests and asks her why and tries to get her to stay. His brother is angry, and Seth is too, but he also feels strangely at peace. There’s the storm he was expecting, just different from what exactly he was expecting. 

“I can’t stay,” Kate says, cutting Richie in the middle of his sentence. 

“Why the hell not?!”

“Because I don’t know who I am anymore and I can’t figure that out when I’m surrounded by people who expect me to be the person they remember. And I’m not her anymore.”

The words cut him deep, but he knows she’s right. And even if she weren’t, it’s what she feels is best for her. It’s her choice, and he promised himself it would always be her choice over anything else.

“What are you going to do?” Richie asks, sounding finally resigned to the situation.

Kate shrugs. “I guess I should deal with what we left behind in Bethel.”

“You can have one of the cars,” Richie says. “Or maybe you want one of us to give you a ride?” he adds and he glances at Seth. 

If she asks, he will gladly drive her wherever she wants to go, even if leaving her somewhere would feel too much like that dark road in fucking Mexico. 

“Just a car is fine, Richie. Thanks,” she replies and Seth tries not to show how relieved he is. 

She leaves the office with a last glance towards him. 

Once she’s gone, Richie turns to him. 

“You’re not gonna try to change her mind?”

Seth leans against the wall and crosses his arms. “What for? She made her choice, Richie.”

“You want her to stay.”

“I want her to get better. And if she thinks she needs to be away from us to do it, I’m not gonna stop her.”

“Seth—”

“She deserves to make her own choices, Richie,” Seth cuts him off. “It doesn’t matter if we don’t like it,” he adds as he leaves the room. 

He spends too long in the gym, doing pull ups and push ups and raging against the punching bag until he can’t feel his arms anymore. He showers with boiling water afterwards, then grabs a bottle of mezcal and goes outside. He sits in the dead grass and stares as the sun starts to descend toward the horizon.

He hears her before he sees her, dry grass crunching under her shoes as she walks to his spot. She sits down next to him. He holds the bottle out for her. 

“Are you mad?” she asks before taking a swig. She doesn’t grimace or scrunch up her nose.

He looks toward the sun again. “Not at you,” he says. It’s true. He is mad, mostly at himself, because he’s the reason she’s here, and he’s the reason she has to go. He fucked up her life something good and now he only has himself to blame. 

“It’s not your fault,” she says softly. 

He wants to yell and to break things, but he just huffs a humorless laugh and starts picking at the grass instead.“This entire goddamn mess is my fault, Princess,” he says with a bitter taste in his throat. “I left you that night. And before that, I let you come with me when I should’ve put you on the first fucking bus back to Texas. We can even go back further if you want. I took you and your family hostage. If it wasn’t for me, y’all wouldn’t’ve been dragged into that fucking nightmare in the first place,” he finishes a bit louder, tearing a handful of dry grass from the ground and throwing it away. 

Nothing shows on her face as she takes another sip of mezcal with her eyes on the sunset. Then she offers him the bottle. He takes it, swallows a mouthful, watches the horizon catch fire.

“I know we live in a world where demons and vampires are real, but last I checked time travel ain’t,” she says. 

He turns his head toward her, stares at her, but she doesn’t seem like she’s going to elaborate. “My fucking shitty choices ruined your life, Kate.”

She doesn’t reply for a while. And then, just as the sun disappears below the faraway hills, she looks at him in the eye. “I forgave you, Seth. It’s time for you to forgive yourself.”

He looks down, his head heavy between his shoulders. He snorts.“Yeah, I’ll try,” he says and he doesn’t sound one bit convincing, but she doesn’t seem to mind. She leans against his side. Why, after everything, after deciding she’s better off far away from them, is she still here, acting like he’s a pillar against which she can support herself and lean on and find comfort? 

It doesn’t make sense to him, he doesn’t understand what’s going on in her head, but as much as he’s confused, he’s not going to point it out. He’s still a selfish bastard and he’ll revel in presence as long as she’ll allow him to. 

Then he wonders how the hell he’s going to be able to sleep at night, knowing that she isn’t two doors down in case she’s in trouble. How he’s going to fall asleep without her against him. 

“What are you thinking?” she asks. 

He glances at her briefly and takes a swig. “I want to be selfish and ask you not to leave. But I understand why you’re doing this. And I want—” He clears his throat, takes a deep breath. It feels like confessing his deepest secrets, feels like she’s going to see right through him after that, but he does it anyway. “I want you to be okay. I took too much from you already and I have to let you go.”

“You let me walk through the gates of Hell, Seth.”

Like he needs the reminder. _Time to let go, partner._ He still sees her, standing strong, smiling through her tears. Watching her walk through that gate is the hardest thing he’s done in his life. He can admit that, at least to himself. At the time, it didn’t seem like the way his heart was tearing itself apart mattered, not when he was pretty certain Amaru was going to rip his soul from him a second later anyway.

“Yeah. I didn’t think I’d live for much longer after that.”

“I’m sorry,” she says.

He turns to her and cradles her face between his hands. “You have nothing to apologize for, Kate,” he says urgently. “Nothing,” he repeats, because she has to know. She could shoot him in the chest right this second and he would probably thank her for the privilege. He closes his eyes and presses his forehead against hers. She puts her hands on the back of his neck and breathes deeply, evenly, and he finds himself matching it. 

His febrile energy dissipates and he opens his eyes. 

“When do you leave?” he asks in a low voice, despite the fact that he’s dreading her answer.

She leans back and looks at him. “Tomorrow morning,” she says. 

It takes him a lot of self control not to pull her back against him and never let her go. Instead, he nods and he says “okay” like he’s not bleeding inside.

She gets up. “I’m going to bed early tonight,” she tells him. “Early start and all that.”

He doesn’t work at the bar that night, figures Richie can fill in for him or find someone who can, and goes to bed at the same time as her. She doesn’t say anything about it. He gets under the covers, lets the selfish part of him win and spoons her. She snuggles back against his chest, puts her arm on top of the one he has around her. 

“G’night, Princess,” he murmurs against her hair. 

She laces their fingers together and squeezes his hand. “Good night, Seth.”

He doesn’t fall asleep immediately. He’s not used to going to sleep before five in the morning anymore, but he’s not even sure that’s the reason. He wants to be conscious for the last few hours he has with her. He’s afraid that if he lets himself sleep, he’ll wake up and she’ll be gone. She hasn’t said a thing about coming back once she’s done with her business in Bethel, about seeing them again. He didn’t ask, because as long as he doesn’t have an answer, he can still hope he’ll see her again, even if it would be better for her to stay away, back to a normal life of—what? He doesn’t even know what a normal life is, never had one. Prom? College? Parties with watered down beer and cheap liquor?

It doesn’t matter, as long as she’s safe.

He must have fallen asleep at some point, because he wakes up to her screaming and crying, practically clawing at his arms and chest. 

“Kate, Kate, wake up,” he urges, not even dodging her fists as she thrashes around and struggles with her nightmare. “Kate,” he calls her again. He brushes her cheek. “It’s not real, Kate. Wake up, come on, Princess.”

She takes a panicked breath in and startles awake. He doesn’t have time to be relieved she shook the nightmare off because she starts hyperventilating, her eyes wide and terrified on him. 

“It’s okay, you’re safe,” he says softly, his thumbs rubbing circles on her cheekbones. “You’re safe.” She’s shaking but she manages to give him a nod. “Take a deep breath. Now keep it in. Just like I taught you, yeah? Now let it out, nice and slow.” He guides her through it and he sees the panic slowly seep away from her. “Keep breathing,” he says as he gently pushes her hair from her face, tucks it behind her ear. “Keep breathing.”

She sags against him. He leans back against the headboard and holds her against his chest, stroking her back while she still shakes a little, brushing her arm with light fingers in a way he hopes helps her calm down. 

Eventually, she falls back asleep against him, her head pillowed on his shoulder. 

How the hell is he supposed to let her go now? How is he supposed to be okay with the fact that the next time she has a nightmare, she’ll have to face it alone? 

He promised himself he would respect her choices, and he will. No matter how much he wants to be selfish and to keep her in his arms, he will let her go. He just doesn’t know what will be left of his heart afterwards.

He lets his fingers tangle into the short hair at the nape of her neck. She makes a tiny sound in the back of her throat, nuzzles into his chest, and lets out a contented sigh. 

He holds her and waits for the morning to come.

He goes with her to the car as the sun starts to rise over the compound. He dumps her bags in the trunk, doesn’t think of how empty his closet looks now that her stuff isn’t in it anymore.

“What’s this?” she asks, pointing at the backpack on the passenger seat.

“Richie’s idea of a farewell gift.”

She looks inside, seems amused at what she finds. He takes the paper bag he left in the trunk the night before and holds it out for her.

“My idea of a farewell gift,” he explains when she glances up at him and raises an eyebrow in question.

She takes the bag and huffs a laugh when she sees the gun and the ammo.

“You take care of yourself, alright?” he says. She looks up at him, presses her lips together, nods. “And if there’s anything—and I mean it, okay? Anything. You call me. Us.” She nods again then hugs him. He never wants to let her go.

He presses a kiss on a forehead. “Be safe,” he mumbles against her skin.

She steps away. The smile she gives him is watery, so reminiscent of the one she gave him in front of the gate. “You too, partner,” she says and her voice cracks on the last word.

She sits behind the wheel and he closes the door after her. He leans into the window. He wants to tell her that she’ll always have a home with them, that they’re only a phone call away. But he doesn’t want to burden her, to make her think he expects anything from her. With one last look, he straightens up and steps away from the car. 

The sound of the engine starting tears through him like a goddamn stake to the heart. He watches her drive away, until the car is barely a dot on the horizon and the sun is well above the hills.

[ ](https://tuntematonkorppi.tumblr.com/post/642488267445518336/what-does-it-matter-how-my-heart-breaks-part-i)


	3. Part II - 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We can’t be sure of it, you know,” Richie says.  
> Seth is very tempted to shoot his brother in the head, again, just so he can get ten consecutive minutes of goddamn peace and quiet. Especially now that Richie has reached the having-entire-conversations-in-his-head-and-expecting-Seth-to-follow-them part of the night.  
> “Sure of what, Richard?” he asks, making sure to say his brother’s name with as much frustration in his voice as he can.   
> “That she doesn’t want to have anything to do with us.”  
> Seth clenches his fists. If there was a time his brother’s obliviousness and unwavering optimism were endearing, he doesn’t remember it. “In case you forgot, we ruined her life.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter covers both part II-1 and II-2 from everywhere at the end of time and because i like causing myself pain, i included a tiny detail that if you notice it will ramp up the angst even more x)

Most of the culebras are sleeping and since there are no life or death situations to deal with, Seth figures that now is the perfect time to get drunk off his ass and pass out on the office couch.

Richie wakes him up with a kick to the shin and a very judgmental look on his face.

"Go clean up. You're working tonight."

Seth wants to tell him to fuck off and leave him alone. Except what is he going to do if he doesn't have a few dozen drunk people to keep his mind busy? Drink and wallow in his misery? As tempting as it sounds, his liver doesn’t have magic healing properties. And he can still do it after work.

He heaves himself off the couch, ignores Richie's self satisfied smirk and leaves the office.

His room feels empty and cold now that Kate's gone. She didn't even have that many things lying around, but now that all traces of her are gone, he sees how truly lifeless his room is. The same thing happened in Mexico, he realizes. He had come back to the place they had been calling home for those last couple of weeks, but it didn't feel like home anymore. It was just a shitty hotel room, filled with anger and misery and bitterness and a near-miss heroin overdose.

He takes a shower. The hot water does nothing to relax the knot of muscles in his neck or the tension in his shoulders. 

When he opens his closet to get dressed, the empty half looks like it's taunting him, mocking him. He takes a pair of jeans and a shirt from a drawer. He goes to grab a waistcoat, but it stays stuck on its hanger, caught on something. Seth yanks on it and hears a distinct tearing sound.

After everything, it's stupid to lose his shit because of a fucking hanger. 

He knows that. Doesn’t keep him from losing it, though.

He throws his jeans and shirt on the floor, soon to be followed by everything he puts his hands on. The hangers clatter and clothes fall limply as he rips them from the rack. He tears them away one after the other, cursing and swearing and not realizing what he's doing until he stops and backs away. When his back hits the opposite wall, he slides down on the floor, staring at the aftermath of his anger.

He leans his elbows against his knees and rubs at his jaw, his muscles aching from clenching his teeth too hard, then at the back of his neck. He lets his head hang heavily over his chest, scratches the shaven back of his scalp repeatedly, as if it could help straighten his brain out.

He's a mess. 

He realizes he's not breathing right when dark spots start dancing in front of his eyes.

"Fuck," he mumbles weakly.

He forces himself to inhale as deep as he can even if it makes him feel like he's being stabbed in the ribs. He holds his breath, counts to five, exhales. It takes him a couple of tries before the black spots dissipate, but it’s not enough to actually regain any sort of control. He closes his eyes. It's been a long time since he's had a panic attack.

He’s helped Kate through hers, has spent his childhood and teenage years dealing with Richie’s, he knows what to do, that it will pass and he’ll be okay in the end, but there’s a stark difference between knowing rationally what’s going on and what to do and feeling like he’s slowly being crushed to death and suffocated from the inside. 

He tries to think. What did he tell Kate to do that first time it happened to her after the Twister? 

He keeps rubbing at the nape of his neck, feeling the prickle of the stubble of hair under the tips of his fingers. 

Grounding.

Lists.

He presses his fists against his eyes. 

“1950, Sidney Blackmer,” he mutters between two shaky breaths. “1951...1951, Claude Rains. 1952, José Ferrer…”

He continues down his list, focusing on finding the right name for the right year the way Eddie taught him to after the fire. 

He’s reached “1967, Paul Rogers” when he finally feels like there’s no more lead being poured into his lungs.

He opens his eyes, lowers his hands from his head. He opens and closes them a couple of times, just to make sure he can feel them properly. Then he stands up, one hand braced against the wall. 

He gathers his jeans, his shirt, and a waistcoat from the mess on the floor and gets dressed. 

He probably looks like shit. He doesn’t trust his hands to be steady enough to be able to shave.

He tucks his gun in the back of his waistband and goes back to the office. His hands only shake a little when he pours a shot of whiskey and knocks it back. 

“It’s a good one. You’re supposed to sip it,” Richie says, annoyed.

Seth side-eyes him and pours himself another glass.

Without their job as collectors for the Lords, there isn’t a lot to do besides managing the bar and the shipping business. 

Richie seems completely fine with it, revelling in money and alcohol and women. 

Once upon a time, this is all Seth would have ever wanted, even if he isn’t on a beach in paradise, with fine white sand and turquoise waters. But the money, the alcohol and the women? There was a time he believed that it’s all that mattered in life.

Now though, he’s restless.

Maybe he spent too much time running for his life and for the lives of the few people he cares about, and now he doesn’t remember how to relax. Maybe staying too long in the same place, doing the same thing over and over again feels too much like prison, even if he can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants. 

Maybe that’s the problem. He can have anything, except the thing he wants the most. 

He knows Richie gave her a cell phone, knows they have her number. But he doesn’t contact her. She told them she needed to figure out who she was on her own, she doesn’t need him to harass her unnecessarily. 

She doesn’t contact them either. 

Sometimes Scott comes by the bar and he gives them updates. She’s living in Houston now. It takes him an amount of self control he didn’t know he possessed not to get into his car and start driving there. 

“She’s going to college?” Richie asks, swirling his whiskey in his glass.

Scott shrugs. “I don’t know. Last time we talked she’d started a job in a restaurant.”

Richie nods. “What about you?”

Scott looks up from his almost empty beer and squints at him. “What about me?”

“You’re good?”

Scott doesn’t answer immediately. He looks suspiciously between Richie and Seth, and honestly, Seth can’t blame him. Why would he trust them to actually care? They’ve been nothing but assholes to him since they met. “Yeah,” he finally replies.

Seth gestures at his beer bottle. “Want another?”

“You know I’m not 21 yet, right?”

Seth snorts. “Right, because everything about this bar is completely legal,” he says, turning around and grabbing the kid a fresh beer. 

Richie joins him in the office after last call. It’s taken Seth a while to stop expecting that he’s going to see Kate in the doorframe every time the door opens in the middle of the night. 

“I have an idea,” Richie says as he stops in front of Seth’s desk.

Seth glances up from a shipping report. His brother is staring right at him, leaning forward to get closer. He means business.

Seth looks back down at his stack of papers. “What?” he asks. 

“We should send money to Kate.”

Seth stops trying to read the file and closes it. Then he leans back in his chair and crosses his arms as he stares up at Richie. 

“She doesn’t want anything to do with us, remember?”

“It’s just money, Seth.”

“It’s never just money. She’d see that as us trying to meddle in her life, _again_. Or like we’re expecting something from her, and that’s the last fucking thing she needs.”

Richie pouts. Seth reopens his file.

“What if we go through Scott?” Richie says after a few minutes of standing silently in front of him.

Seth sighs. It’s too late at night for him to follow his brother’s logic, if it exists. “The hell are you talking about?”

“We give money to Scott and he sends some of it to Kate. That way she has money to get the life she deserves but it isn’t tied to us.”

Seth closes the file again. 

It is true that Kate deserves to not be stressed about money and Seth knows from experience that working at a restaurant is far from the best paying job. He just doesn’t want her to feel like she owes them anything. He could ask Richie what the fuck Scott is supposed to tell her when she asks where the money come from, but the truth is that he’s weary and that no matter what he says, Richie will end up doing whatever he wants to do anyway.

“Fine,” he says, raising his hands in surrender. “You do that.”

Richie straightens up with a satisfied smile. “Good. You’ll talk to Scott then?”

Seth raises both eyebrows. “Why the fuck would I talk to Scott?”

“Make sure he’s on board?”

“It’s your idea. Besides, the kid hates me.”

Richie snorts. “He hates me too, you’re not special, brother.”

Seth rolls his eyes. “Yeah, but you have the bloodsucker thing in common,” he says with a vague up and down hand motion towards his brother.

Richie stares at him in a way that would be creepy for anyone else. Seth is too used to it to find it weird and stares right back.

“Fine,” Richie finally says when Seth doesn’t budge. “I’ll talk to the kid.”

Seth gives him a sarcastic smile. “Great,” he says and immediately drops the smile. “Now can you please fuck off so I can finish dealing with this shipment?”

Richie turns around and goes to the console where he keeps his whiskey. Seth reopens the file, intent on finishing reviewing it.

“We can’t be sure of it, you know,” Richie says.

Seth is very tempted to shoot his brother in the head, again, just so he can get ten consecutive minutes of goddamn peace and quiet. Especially now that Richie has reached the having-entire-conversations-in-his-head-and-expecting-Seth-to-follow-them part of the night.

“Sure of what, Richard?” he asks, making sure to say his brother’s name with as much frustration in his voice as he can. 

“That she doesn’t want to have anything to do with us.”

Seth clenches his fists. If there was a time his brother’s obliviousness and unwavering optimism were endearing, he doesn’t remember it. “In case you forgot, we ruined her life.”

“She forgave us.”

“Doesn’t mean we have the right to fuck it up even more.”

“Do you actually believe that or is it just what you’re telling yourself to justify being a wallowing asshole?”

The problem when your brother has been your partner in crime for more or less your entire lives is that the death glare that keeps most people from saying shit around you is utterly useless on him. 

“I don’t see you calling her either,” Seth mutters. 

Richie stares at him flatly and Seth’s stomach twists. What if Richie has actually been in contact with her? He doesn’t think Richie would actually keep something like that from him, but what if she asked him to?

“No, I’m not,” Richie says before Seth can spiral down further. “But it’s not my bed she was sleeping in.”

Seth looks up sharply. “Watch your mouth.”

“Or what? You’re gonna shoot me?”

“‘S getting more and more tempting.”

“And it won’t change anything. You know I’m right, Seth.”

He glares at Richie and stands up. “What you are is a goddamn pain in my ass,” he says as he walks to the door.

“Seth Gecko, running away from difficult conversations? What a shock,” Richie calls after him.

Seth doesn’t turn around to punch or shoot him, no matter how much he wants to.

He’s not avoiding difficult conversations. He just doesn’t see the _point_ in having them. The outcome isn’t going to change either way.

Richie does try to start that particular one again a couple of times. He only gives up after Seth takes his gun out and cocks it with a sardonic smile.

Weeks turn into months and nothing changes and while Seth is glad he’s not running for his life, getting shot at, having his blood or his soul sucked out of him or all of the above, he’s getting even more restless. 

They’re rich, richer than they’ve ever been, and yet all he wants to do is rob a bank. A casino, even. Anything, as long as there’s adrenalin and it ends with the satisfaction of a heist well done. 

Which is why he doesn’t even curse or swear or start drinking immediately when Richie comes to him one day with bad news.

Seth has just finished dealing with a shipment that was delayed when Richie intercepts him on his way to the kitchen. 

“We have a problem,” Richie tells him urgently.

Seth raises an eyebrow. “Is it a we’re-out-of-tequila-and-the-supplier-is-unreachable kind of problem or an aliens-are-real-and-invading-us kind of problem?”

Richie gives him an annoyed look, but the tension doesn’t ease from his face, so—shit. “More like a there-are-some-culebras-going-rogue-and-they-want-to-bring-back-Amaru kind of problem.”

Seth stops walking. “Fucking what now?”

“Yeah.”

“How did you even hear about that?” Seth asks. 

“Kisa called me.”

Seth groans but starts moving again. It’s early in the morning and the sun has been up for a few hours, so most of the compound is deserted, but he still waits until they’re in the empty kitchen to ask for details. While he’s 99% certain their crew is only loyal to them, their encounter with Amaru’s skull fucker is still fresh in his mind.

“Alright, what did she say?” he asks as he opens the fridge and takes out what he needs to fix himself a sandwich. 

“Her group was targeted, a few months back,” Richie explains. “At first they thought it was just a territory thing, you know, basic rivalry, but after investigation, they found paintings of Amaru. And altars.”

Seth looks up from the mustard he’s spreading on a slice of bread. “That’s it?”

Richie glares at him. “No, it’s not. They found more groups and more altars. They’re all over the state and she wants our help wiping them off the map.”

“What do we care if a bunch of freaks are worshipping a fake, dead god?” Seth asks as he finishes spreading the mustard. “Shitton of people do that and they’re not even blood suckers,” he says, licking mustard off his thumb and then opening the package of turkey slices.

“Those people don’t do blood sacrifices, Seth. Beside, one of the nests didn’t have a painting of Amaru. They had a picture of Kate.”

Seth’s blood turns to ice in his veins. The knife he was holding clatters on the counter as he locks eyes with Richie. 

“What?” he asks, low and dangerous. “The fuck do they want with her?” He clenches his fists on each side of the plate, tries to tamp down the anger he can feel rising inside of him. 

“As her former host, they believe she still has a connection to Amaru.”

Seth swallows the bile in his throat. His hunger has disappeared, overcome by a mix of fear and rage. With one swift move, he sends his plate flying across the room. 

“For Christ’s sake!” he yells. 

Richie doesn’t even blink. “Kate is safe,” he says calmly.

“How the fuck do you even know that?”

“If she was in danger, she would’ve called us,” Richie says with more confidence than what Seth feels is warranted.

Seth doesn’t believe that for a second. Richie still believes Kate is going to come back to them, strolling through Jed’s doors, smiling and laughing like they can all be friends again. 

Seth knows better. But he also knows it’s useless to argue with his brother when he’s so sure of himself like that. 

He rubs at his face, scratches his too-long-to-be-stubble-but-not-quite beard. Then he opens a cupboard, takes a glass out, grabs a bottle of scotch from the alcohol shelf, then foregoes the glass entirely and drinks directly from the bottle. 

“Call her,” he says.

Richie frowns. “Kate?”

“Kisa. Get us a meeting. We need a motherfucking plan.”

Seth expects her to ask them to come to her, or to meet on neutral grounds. She doesn’t and instead agrees to come directly to them. They close the bar for the night, and send all their people home. They’re at the counter, Seth behind it mixing Richie a drink as she enters, only one man accompanying her.

“Seth. Richie,” she greets them as she gets closer.

“Kisa,” Richie replies.

“Your worshipness,” Seth says, lifting the bottle of bourbon like a salute before filling three more glasses. He keeps one for himself and slides the other two in direction of Kisa and her goon.

“This is Lazlo,” she says and sits on a stool. 

Seth nods to him but focuses back to Kisa. “So. About those rogues. What exactly is your plan?”

She takes a sip of her glass then lowers it. “Going straight to the point, I can respect that,” she says. “My operation isn’t big enough to cover the entirety of the state. We need your help. We’ll give you all of the info we have, point you to any nests we hear about.”

“How do we divide the territory?” Richie asks.

“We’re based in the north,” Kisa says. “You’re closer to the border.”

Seth takes a mouthful of bourbon. “So what, we draw a line in the middle and call it a day?”

“It really is simple when you say it like that,” Kisa replies with a smirk. 

Richie stands up from his stool and crosses the bar to go get the framed map of Texas hanging on the wall. Why they have a map of Texas on the wall, Seth doesn’t know, but they really need to rethink the decorations in this place. 

Richie takes the map from its frame and slaps it down on the counter.

“Are we sure they’re only in Texas?” Seth asks. 

To his surprise, it’s not Kisa who answers, but her goon, Lazlo. “Yes,” he says. “Culebras in Mexico are faithful to _La Diosa_. Always have been, always will be. We have recruited a lot of them to help us against the _pícaros_.”

“Fantastic.”

They divide the map in two, and Lazlo goes out and brings back two boxes of files from their car.

“This is everything we have on potential nests in south Texas,” Kisa says. “And several of our informants’ contacts. Lazlo is one of our intelligence specialists, he can walk you through our methods for finding them.”

Seth sees the glint in Richie’s eyes. 

“Great,” Richie says. “Let’s go set something up in the back.” He finishes his drink, takes the map and strides toward the offices. Lazlo glances at Kisa, who nods, and he follows suit with the boxes. 

Kisa stands up, but Seth stops her with a hand on her arm. She looks down at his hand, then looks up at his face. 

“Can I talk to you for a minute?” he asks in a low voice and removes his hand.

She studies him a second longer. “Sure,” she says, sitting back on the stool.

“Richie said you found a picture of Kate in one of the nests.”

“We did. Some of them believe she still has a connection to Amaru.”

Seth thinks about the wounds in Kate’s wrists, the ones that should’ve required stitches, maybe even surgery, but that were partially healed when he got around to treating them. Then he thinks of the gash in her bicep, gaping and fresh, and he doesn’t know what to think anymore.

“They’re planning on going after her?”

Kisa tilts her head and squints at him a little. “For now they’re mostly just attacking civilians, performing blood sacrifices. We don’t know why yet.”

“Richie said they attacked you.”

“They did. I’m still _La Diosa_ to them, still the most obvious choice for her archenemy.”

“But Kate is the one who defeated her.”

Kisa shrugs. “Nobody knows what actually happened in Matanzas, Seth. Kate is the one who sent her back to Xibalba, but we only know that because we were there. When people hear about it, who do you think they believe has defeated the Queen of Hell, a little unknown church girl or Santanico Pandemonium?” she asks, spitting her former name like it’s a curse.

Seth pours himself another glass and holds up the bottle. She glances at it then slides her glass closer to him. He refills it and slides it back to her. He leans against the counter and takes a sip. 

“She’s in Houston,” he says after several minutes filled only with silence and the growing awareness that Kisa is waiting for him to talk. “I only know that because of her brother. We haven’t been in contact.”

Kisa frowns. “Why not?”

Seth stares at his glass. “She said she needed to be away from us. Can’t really blame her,” he adds and knocks back the rest of the bourbon. 

“Is that why you’re still here and not with her?” Kisa asks. 

Seth clenches his jaw. He wants nothing more than to jump in a car and floor it to Houston. He wants to see her with his own two eyes, wants to make sure she’s safe. But he knows that he’s not rational when it comes to her, that he can’t trust his instincts. He’s a paranoid and overprotective bastard and she made the choice to get away from him. He’s not about to kidnap her and hold her hostage again just because a bunch of freaks can’t admit they’ve been defeated. 

“Richie thinks she’s safe,” he answers with his eyes on the counter.

“But you don’t.”

He looks up. Her dark gaze is piercing, unflinching. He knows she’s not actually in his head, that she can’t hear his thoughts, but it feels like she is, like she can read him, see through him. It’s one thing when he gets that feeling from Richie. It’s another entirely when it comes from her. 

“I can find her,” Kisa says. “Make sure she’s okay, even get a few people to check up on her.”

“She deserves a normal life.”

“Relax. She’ll never know.” Kisa takes a sip of her drink.

“Thank you.”

She raises an eyebrow. “I’m not doing it for you.”

Seth snorts. “Yeah. I know.”

He gets a text from Kisa a couple of days later.

_Found her in Houston. Got eyes on her. Everything is fine._

His sleep is slightly better that night. 

They assemble teams of fighters, stock up on weapons, schedule training sessions and set up an incident command in the warehouse. They destroy five nests based on the intel supplied by Lazlo, find more clues pointing toward more nests, more altars, more sacrificial grounds. 

Seth goes to as many raids as possible. It’s not quite the same high as a well executed heist, but the satisfaction of a job well done is there and it keeps the restlessness at bay. It helps him forget what day it is when he realizes it’s been a year since Kate left. 

Months pass.

He gets hurt, sometimes, and he feels Richie’s judgmental stare on him each time. He feels the weight of the injuries piling up too, but he keeps going. And maybe he takes some unnecessary risks, maybe he should be more mindful of his own mortality. It’s not that he wants to prove something to the culebras with him, no, he doesn’t give a fuck what they think about him. He needs to be there because he needs to check the altars for himself, because he can’t trust anyone else to investigate them properly. He can’t run the risk of something being overlooked, not when Kate’s safety hangs in the balance. 

Sometimes it’s just cuts and bruises. A sprained wrist, a sore ankle. There’s that time in Laredo where a bullet takes a chunk out of his right thigh. Then the concussion in Terlingua. The broken fingers somewhere in Brooks County.

“You’re not invincible, Seth,” Richie admonishes as he gets ready to put Seth’s dislocated shoulder back into its socket after the raid in Uvalde.

“No shit,” Seth hisses, and grabs a bottle of tequila with a white-knuckle grip. He swallows a mouthful. “Do it.”

The joint pops back into place and Seth shouts to stop himself from throwing up. Richie slaps an icepack on his shoulder.

“You need to let us handle this,” Richie says. 

Seth glares at him. “I’m fine.”

“Clearly you’re not.”

“Well I made it out alive, didn’t I?”

The look Richie gives him is a painfully open and honest one. “But one day you won’t,” his brother says without bothering to hide his true feelings behind a mask of neutrality or his usual arrogance. 

Seth rubs at his forehead. “I’m not dying yet, Richie,” he mutters and takes a swig of tequila. 

“I’d prefer if you weren’t dying at all.”

He glances up. “I’m not going to let you turn me.”

Richie gives him one last pained look, then walks away.

Seth lets his head hang heavily over his chest. He knows how Richie feels. There was a time when no one could tell who was the older of the Gecko brothers. But those five years in prison left their mark on him, and now, Richie will forever look like he’s in his twenties, and Seth will get older and look like it too. And unless someone drives a stake through Richie’s heart, Seth will die long before he will. He’ll die before he’ll let anyone stake his brother anyway. 

He takes another swig of tequila.

And another.

And another.

He sits out the next job because he can’t lift his gun and he’s a lousy shot with his right hand. 

Instead, he pours over the intel they’ve collected so far. He’s not as talented as Richie is at seeing patterns and hidden codes, but he can do alright if he focuses enough. He reads the reports, scans whatever they salvaged from previous raids. 

“Anything interesting?” Richie asks. Seth didn’t hear him coming. He doesn’t even know how long he’s been in incident command, but his eyes are burning and he could use a coffee or five. He looks up and finds Richie holding out a mug filled to the brim. 

“Thanks.” 

The coffee is dark and strong and bitter and exactly what he needed. He leans back on his chair, stretches his neck, rolls his still-healing shoulder a couple of times. 

“So? Anything?” Richie repeats.

“Maybe.” Seth passes him a file. “Warehouse south of Amarillo.” Richie peruses the file, takes a look at Seth’s notes, then at something on the board on the wall. “So?” Seth asks behind his mug. “What do you think?”

“I’m thinking you’re right, brother. I’ll send the info to Kisa.”

Two months later, he has a new neat row of stitches on his forearm, courtesy of a culebra that tried to hack him into pieces with a meat cleaver in Hebbronville. He’ll have a scar, he can already tell, not that he gives a shit. 

He sits at his desk and reviews the latest shipments. They’re still a business, despite their side job as rogue culebra hunters, and he still has to deal with numbers and invoices and spreadsheets. He massages his shoulder as he waits for his computer to boot up. The joint is mostly fine, except when he pushes himself too far—which he does, probably too often. 

He rubs his neck and closes his eyes. When he opens them back up again, all he can see is the date on his computer screen. 

It’s Kate’s twenty-first birthday. 

He swallows. 

Wherever she is, he hopes she’s having fun, celebrating with not a single worry in the world, exactly like a twenty one year old girl should. 

They get intel about an altar being set up near Ozona. A small operation from what they can gather, barely ten rogues, but it’s been particularly active on the human sacrifice front. 

“Should I come with?” Richie asks as he watches Seth choose his guns. 

Seth takes a revolver and checks the barrel. “We’ll be fine,” he answers as he snaps the barrel back into place with a flick of his wrist. “Besides, last time we both left Kalinda almost killed Marney.”

Richie raises an eyebrow and makes his “fair enough” face. “Alright, have fun out there.”

Turns out, their intel was wrong and they’re _fucked_.

It’s not a small operation. It’s not barely ten rogues. Seth gets separated from his team almost immediately and has no way of contacting them. They have their orders and they know what to do in almost any situation, and they’re also culebras so they’re more durable than his human ass, so he’s not worried about them. No, he’s worried about the fact that this whole thing smells like a goddamn trap.

They’ve become too complacent. They’ve been too trusting of the intel they’ve gathered, not considering that the rogues might find a way to counter-attack. And now, they’ve been set up like fucking rookies. 

He prowls through the warehouse, doing his best to dodge the bullets flying at him, while also trying to get back to his team, but it’s a goddamn maze and he doesn’t have an unlimited amount of bullets.

He can’t even tell if he’s getting closer to the main fight or not, with the sounds of the machine gun popping off behind him. He turns a corner and barges into an almost empty, barely lit storage space. Despite the relative darkness, he spots piles of ashes on the ground and he can’t tell if they’re from his team or the rogues. 

“Seth Gecko,” a voice calls loudly and the overhead spotlight turns on, flooding the space with bright and harsh fluorescent light.

Seth blinks a couple of times to adjust. A man is walking toward him. He’s wearing a cowboy hat and Seth can’t see any weapons in his hands, but that doesn’t mean shit. He points his gun at him and readjusts his grip. He’s been counting his bullets. He knows he’s almost out. Two other silhouettes step out of the shadows on each side of the first man, and Seth hears footsteps behind him. He doesn’t turn. He knows the danger comes from the man in the hat. 

“You know,” Seth says, “I always wondered what it felt like to be a celebrity. Everyone knows your face, your name, they see you and they call you, but you? You don’t know jack shit about them.” He keeps his gun on the man. “I guess I don’t have to wonder anymore.”

The man steps into the light. He’s short, skinny, with a wrinkled weasel face. If someone asked Seth to describe a sadist, he would probably describe something like the man in front of him. 

“My apologies,” the man says. “I’m Willet.”

“Fan-fucking-tastic. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna put a bullet through your skull and get the fuck out of here.”

The man laughs. “I’m not sure you understand your situation, Mr. Gecko. You’re surrounded. Your entire team is dead. There’s nowhere for you to run.”

“Yeah? Why don’t you just kill me then?”

The man grins. “Oh, but you’re so much more useful to me alive.” Then he nods at the people behind Seth.

Seth whirls around and manages to plug two culebras in the heart, but he misses the third one. Something heavy hits him in the side of the head and he’s on the ground before he knows what happened. He tries to get back to his feet, but a pair of Santiags appear in front of his face. He doesn’t have time to raise his arms in front of him to protect his head.

He wakes up with a jolt, drenched in ice cold water. He’s bare chested, his arms are tied behind his back in a way that will make his shoulder hurt like a motherfucker soon and the right side of his jaw feels swollen. 

The man from earlier is standing in front of him, two of his goons next to him. 

“Welcome back, Mr. Gecko,” he says. 

“Fuck you.”

The man chuckles. “Charming. Here’s what’s going to happen. My men here are going to ask you some questions and you’re going to give them answers we’re looking for. I’m really sorry I can’t stay, I have other businesses to attend to.”

He grins, taps his hat and leaves the room—the cell, Seth realizes. He’s in a cell and there’s a table on the side and from what he can see, it’s covered with various torture instruments. The two goons tower over him.

One punches him in the face.

“Hey! Ain’t you supposed to ask the question _before_ hitting?” Seth shouts and spits some blood on the ground. 

One of the goons grins. 

[ ](https://tuntematonkorppi.tumblr.com/post/643109970333908992/what-does-it-matter-how-my-heart-breaks-part-ii)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> two questions:  
> 1) did you pick up the angsty detail?  
> 2) any idea what that list seth says out loud is?


	4. Part II - 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s getting hard to breathe, hard to stay conscious. He’s getting cold and he knows, despite how messed up his head is, that it’s bad. Real bad. He has flirted with death too many times to count, but this time looks like it’ll be the last.  
> He’s not afraid of dying. He’s made his peace with it a while ago, never expected to make it past thirty anyway.  
> But he doesn’t want to leave Richie behind. He’s better now, his brother, he has found his place in the world, but Seth is still all he’s got when you get down to it.  
> He wishes he had seen Kate one last time. Not even talked to her. Just seen her, from afar, living her life like a normal twenty-one year old, happy and carefree. If he had a chance to see that, maybe he could die feeling a little less guilty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is dedicated to [Emily](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mycanonnevercame) who just gifted me the most perfect SethKate fanfic ever. Y'all need to read it. It's great.

He’s losing sensation in his arms and hands. He doesn’t know how long it’s been, can’t keep track of time. He keeps passing out and he doesn’t know how long these periods of unconsciousness last. There are no windows in the room and he can’t see his watch.

He threw up once.

They keep asking him questions, the same questions over and over and over again, and he can’t give them answers.

They ask about Kate and he wants to punch their teeth out that they even dare say her name, but he also knows they have no idea what the fuck they’re talking about. They tell him they know she’s working with the Geckos, that she’s been chasing rogues just like he and Richard are. 

He mouths off and gets a fist to the eyebrow in return.

He can’t see from his left eye anymore, and he should be worried. He can’t figure out if it’s because of the swelling or because they truly fucked up his eye, but it’s hard to focus on anything, really.

He spits blood on the floor.

He’s too exhausted to yell when they start torturing him again.

The man in the hat doesn’t come back.

He wonders why they bother keeping him alive when it’s obvious he’s useless to them. In a brief moment of lucidity, he thinks of a trap. He hates to say it, but he’s the weak link in their operation. The only human. They want Richie and he’s just the goddamn bait.

They keep coming back, keep punching him, cutting him. He wonders how the hell he still has blood to spill.

He’s drooling, more blood than saliva at this point. It’s getting hard to breathe, hard to stay conscious. He’s getting cold and he knows, despite how messed up his head is, that it’s bad. Real bad. He has flirted with death too many times to count, but this time looks like it’ll be the last.

He’s not afraid of dying. He’s made his peace with it a while ago, never expected to make it past thirty anyway.

But he doesn’t want to leave Richie behind. He’s better now, his brother, he has found his place in the world, but Seth is still all he’s got when you get down to it.

He wishes he had seen Kate one last time. Not even talked to her. Just seen her, from afar, living her life like a normal twenty-one year old, happy and carefree. If he had a chance to see that, maybe he could die feeling a little less guilty.

He coughs up more blood.

Then he loses consciousness again.

“Seth. Seth, c’mon, open your eyes.”

This voice. It can’t be here. Kate can’t be here. Kate is safe, back to the civilian world, miles away from culebras, miles away from him.

Maybe they drugged him. Maybe he’s hallucinating her, _again_.

He opens his eye, and somehow, she’s here. 

“The fuck,” he hears himself mumble. It’s hard to make his mouth move, hard to form words. His muscles feel sluggish, disconnected from his head. Or maybe it’s his head that is disconnected from his body.

Kate is here and she can’t be. But she’s touching his face and calling his name. Hallucinating her means his head is fucked up badly, that he lost too much blood or has too bad a head injury or both. He wants to revel in her presence, wants to enjoy it while it lasts, but he also knows that he should try and hold onto reality, try to stay conscious, try to stay _alive._

“You’re not here,” he says to himself, because he’s not going to start talking to a hallucination. He tries to focus on the physical sensations he knows he can trust, like the zip ties around his wrists, except he can’t feel them anymore. 

He’s really, truly fucked.

“I’m here, Seth, and we have to go. C’mon, lean on me,” Kate says.

“T’s a trap,” he replies, because it feels like the only thing he can be sure of. Everything else is blurry, wrapped in a deep fog in his mind, but not this.

“I know. Richie and the others are taking care of the rogues.”

He blinks. Richie is here? 

He makes an effort to actually focus on the hallucination, and the more he looks, the more real Kate seems to be. She’s so different from the last time he saw her, that it can’t be real. She looks older, fiercer, but also more at peace than the person who drove away from him a year ago. 

She has a streak of blood on her face and her hair is messy and she has stakes strapped to her thigh and there’s no way in hell his messed-up brain could conjure such a sight. 

“Kate…?” he asks.

“Yep.”

She removes her hoodie. She’s wearing shoulder holsters with a gun on each side. He spots a tattoo on her left forearm—a snake, twisting around her wrist. She’s not skinny like she was after Amaru, her arms muscled and toned and strong and he understands nothing of what he’s seeing.

“The fuck are you doing here?” he asks as she helps him into the hoodie. 

“Saving your ass,” she replies like it’s obvious, and she wraps an arm around him to help him up.

He gets to his feet and sways, nausea and dizziness hitting him hard, vision going fuzzy at the edges. The only reason he doesn’t collapse is because of her, strong and steady on his left side, supporting him and keeping him upright. He lets his left arm settle over her shoulders, lets her take more of his weight because he just can’t hold himself up. 

She walks them to the entrance of the room he was kept in and he does his best to swallow back the bile rising in his throat. Each step brings more agonizing pain to a new part of his body. He doesn’t remember half of what they did to him, but they’ve been thorough. He can’t focus on a single part of him that doesn’t make him want to fucking die. 

She has a gun in her hand. It doesn’t feel right that she’s the only one of them who’s armed. He should be armed too, so he can watch her back, keep her safe.

“I’d feel better if I had a gun,” he says.

She turns her head to him. “You have a concussion, one good eye, not enough blood, and we both know you suck at shooting with your right hand.”

And yeah, okay, she has a point, even his concussed ass can see that, but it doesn’t mean he has to like it.

She helps him lean against a pile of crates and steps away, prowling toward the end of the corridor, gun raised and ready. He hates that she looks so much in her element, like it’s a thing she’s been doing over and over again. 

“You shouldn’t be here,” he tells her, because she shouldn’t. She should be far away from him, going to college, having drinks with friends her own age, flirting with boys who don’t deserve her but who at least have never endangered her life.

“And your blood should be inside you, but here we fucking are,” she replies without looking back at him.

“If you two are done flirting, we can go now,” a voice says from behind them. 

She’s whirling around and pointing her gun in the direction of the voice so quickly and confidently that he knows this is far from her first time. It makes him want to punch things. If he could, you know, lift either one of his arms.

“For fuck’s sake, Miguel!” she shouts. “I almost fucking shot you!”

The newcomer—Miguel, apparently—walks closer to them. Latino, slender, black hair, uneven jaw, smug grin.

“Ouch,” he says as he glances at Seth. “That looks bad.”

Seth glares at him. “You think?” he says, but even to him, it doesn’t sound as sarcastic as it should. He feels himself getting weaker, slouching more and more against the crates. Some parts of the hoodie feel damp against his skin and he knows it’s not just sweat. 

Kate and Miguel are talking and Kate obviously trusts the guy. She seems relaxed, from what he can see with his one good eye. The edge of his vision is getting darker, everything else becoming blurrier. He wants to ask her so many questions, but he also feels himself slipping away, his hold on consciousness thinning as the seconds pass by. 

The guy comes to his side and helps him up from the crates. Another wave of dizziness hits him and his feet don’t feel like they belong to him anymore, but he forces himself to stay conscious just a little longer. They still have to get out of this fucking place. 

They stagger through the halls. Keeping his good eye open requires too much effort so he closes it, lets himself be guided by the guy. The stale, blood-drenched air surrounding them is replaced by air that’s fresh and cold, and tells him they’ve finally made it outside.

He picks up on the sound of his brother’s voice and Kate’s saying something in return, but everything else is just a low buzzing in his ears and it seems as good a time as any to finally let himself drift away.

There’re hands on his face, in his hair. 

A rumble under him. Flashes of light, even and regular, piercing through his eyelids. He remembers sitting in the passenger seat of Eddie’s car in the middle of the night, lights and shadows distorting and changing with the streetlights they were passing by like clockwork. 

Then nothing. 

  
  
  


The first thing that comes to mind when he regains consciousness is how much his everything hurts. There are no loud noises around him but his head is pounding like the worst hangover he ever had and the rest of him feels like he just got run over by an eight-wheeler or three. 

There’s a sniffling sound to his right. He slowly opens his good eye. He’s in a motel room, flat on his back on a bed. He glances in the direction of the noise and finds Kate there, fast asleep and still wearing her boots and holsters. There’s a man sleeping in the armchair next to the bed. Probably latino, like the guy from earlier, but older, shorter hair, bearded, looking like a Hell’s Angel.

“Look who’s alive,” Richie says from the other side of the room. 

Seth slowly turns his head toward him. He’s sitting on the other bed.

“The fuck just happened,” Seth mutters. His mouth is dry, his throat burning. He tries to sit up, but every single one of his muscles is stiff and sore, his arms like overcooked noodles unable to support his weight. 

Richie walks to his side. “You almost fucking died, is what happened,” he says while he helps him sit slightly more upright, stuffing pillows behind his back for support. 

“Must be Tuesday,” Seth replies.

Richie rolls his eyes. “Yeah, well, you can thank Kate and her friends for saving you,” he says, gesturing at Seth’s torso. 

Seth looks down. His chest is covered in bruises of various colors and various shapes, but all of the cuts have been bandaged, a couple of them stitched. His arms have also been treated, and there’s a small square of gauze taped to the inside of his elbow. 

“The fuck,” he says.

“Kate gave you blood.”

Seth looks up at Richie. “Are you gonna explain to me how the fuck she ended up here?”

Richie glances past him and to Kate. “I think it’s better if she does it.”

“Great. Care to tell me who this guy is then?” he asks with a nod toward the sleeping guy in the armchair.

“It’s one of her friends, she’ll explain everything to you.”

“Are _you_ gonna explain anything? Because I fucking lost the plot here somewhere around the time Kate dragged me out of that goddamn torture chamber.”

“For someone who almost died, you’re certainly loud,” Kate says into her pillow, but loud enough that he actually hears it. He turns his head in time to see her sit up. “You can stop pretending to sleep,” she says without looking at anyone, but the guy in the armchair opens his eyes. “Where are Dorian and Miguel?”

“Went to get some food,” Richie replies.

She stands up, stretches, then starts undoing the buckles of her holsters. “Any word from Doc?”

The guy in the armchair shakes his head.

“What the _fuck_ is going on?” Seth asks, because really, he would like to know and regain some illusion of control over his life, thank you very much. 

Kate looks at him. “We rescued you, you almost died, we’re waiting for our doc to come over and make sure you’re not dying some more,” she replies, like it’s that simple.

He wants to ask who is the “we” she’s talking about, why she knows a doctor well enough to call them “their” doc, how she ended up being the one to rescue him in the first place, but he goes with the easiest question instead. 

“And who the fuck is this?” he asks.

“This is Diego. He’s part of my team,” she replies as she walks to the table.

And here he thought it would be an easy answer. Nothing makes sense and part of him wonders if he’s still in that cell and losing his mind. 

“Your team?” he repeats and he’s fully aware that the laugh he lets out sounds slightly unhinged.

She puts her guns on the table, rummages through a duffle bag and takes out what he would recognize anywhere as gun cleaning supplies, but it’s still shocking to see them in her hand. She sits down, starts disassembling the guns. She’s methodical about it, and he remembers teaching her how to do it back in Mexico.

“Yeah. My team,” is all she says and that doesn’t clear up anything. 

If he doesn’t get an explanation in the next five minutes, he’s going to yell, and given the state of his, well, his everything, it’s probably not a great idea.

“ _Kate_. What the _fuck_.”

She gives a glance at Richie, then looks at the guy—Diego. “Can you give us a minute?”

Diego stands up from the armchair. On his way to the door, he gives Seth a look that clearly tells him he better not hurt her in any way, shape or form.

“Don’t shoot him,” Richie tells Kate before following Diego outside, and wow, isn’t that fucking encouraging. 

Kate stops cleaning her guns, but she doesn’t say anything, doesn’t move. She’s not even looking at him and he can’t go to her, not when it feels like he’s going to crumple the second he tries to get out of bed. 

“Care to explain how the fuck you joined SWAT Culebra Edition?” he says when he can’t stand waiting anymore.

She sighs and runs a hand through her hair, and then she finally gets up and comes closer to him, sitting on the second bed.

“It wasn’t planned,” she starts. “And before you get angry—well, angrier—I want you to know that I never wanted to hurt you.”

He lets out a pained exhale. The apprehension in her voice is killing him. She sounds like she’s afraid of disappointing him and he should tell her that she never could. That he doesn’t have a leg to stand on in that department. That he doesn’t care if she wanted to hurt him, that he’d deserve it, and more.

“That doesn’t sound very encouraging, Princess,” he says instead.

She flinches and he hates himself for it, but before he can tell her that it’s alright, that he doesn’t care what she did as long as she’s healthy and safe, she starts talking again.

“I was out,” she says. “I was trying to find myself again, just like I told you I would when I left. I’ve never lied to you, Seth.”

Her voice is so raw, so open, so eager for him to understand and to not be mad at her, and it’s breaking his heart. He wants to reach out, wrap her in his arms, tell her that he’s not angry, that he never could be angry at her. 

She looks down at her hands. “A culebra found me one night. Then another. I had to leave Houston. I didn’t know where to go, I was just running.”

He swallows thickly. “Why didn’t you come back to m—to us?” he asks, even though he doesn’t necessarily want to hear her tell him about needing to be away from them, from all the wrong they did to her. But well, Seth is a miserable self flagellating asshole. 

But the answer she gives him is not the one he was expecting. 

“I thought—if you believed I was out, living a normal life, I thought you’d be able to forgive yourself.”

“Goddammit, Kate,” he swears, feeling like he just got punched in the gut and left reeling. How can she still be thinking about his guilt after everything that happened? How can she still be so _good_ after everything the world did to her?

“Kisa found me,” she says and he doesn’t have to wonder how Kisa did it. He’s the one who told her where she was living. The familiar feeling of guilt eating away at him is creeping back, but he’s saved from his self-loathing spiral by what she says next. “She offered me a place to stay. To fight back.”

He gets that. He’s glad, _relieved_ , she’s found that. But because he’s nothing but consistent, he can’t help himself from asking another question with an answer he’s afraid to hear.

“Were you ever gonna come back to us?”

She sniffles and closes her eyes and tears roll down her cheeks and that’s not what he wanted. He never wanted to make her cry again, he’s done enough of that for a lifetime. 

“I didn’t know how. I didn’t want you to see who I became. I wasn’t thinking about the future. I was just—all I was ever thinking about was the next job, the next nest, the next fight, and keeping my team safe.”

He nods. “Your team,” he repeats. 

“Yeah.”

She’s looking at him like she’s still afraid of his reaction. He hates that. Hates that he’s someone she feels the need to walk on eggshells around. He never wants to be that person again, not with her. 

He can’t be mad at her, doesn’t even know how to be. The only person he’s angry at is himself. She found people that care about her, who protect her and make her feel like she belongs. It stings that he’s not one of these people, but he can’t blame her. He wouldn’t choose himself either.

“I’m glad you weren’t alone,” he tells her.

She lets out a sob. “Seth. I’m sorry.”

“You have nothing to apologize for,” he says and he needs her to understand that. She never has to apologize to him, has nothing to be sorry for. Ever.

“If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t’ve been captured,” she replies like that makes any kind of sense.

“If it weren’t for you, I’d be fucking dead.”

She lowers her eyes to her hands. She looks exhausted. “I missed you,” she says softly through her tears and his heart rises up to his throat. 

“Kate. C’mere,” he says, because he doesn’t know what else to say and he can’t let her cry her eyes out like this when she’s just a few feet away from him. He remembers a time, during those two weeks she stayed with them at Jed’s, when holding her would help her calm down, and he wonders if it’s still the case, or if it’s something that changed too. She looks up and seems surprised by his request, but not repulsed. 

“Don’t make me stand up and get you, Princess,” he tries again, giving her a tiny self deprecating smile. “I’m pretty sure I’d topple down before getting to my feet.”

It seems to do the trick. She snorts and wipes her eyes, then she climbs on the bed and settles down next to him, moving against him like he’s made of glass. She leans her head on his shoulder and he wraps an arm around her.

“You owe me a hoodie,” she says softly. 

He spots the heap of fabric covered in blood stains at the end of the bed. He smiles as he recognizes the hoodie she stole from him the first day she stayed in his room at Jed’s.

“That shit was mine in the first place, you thief.”

She chuckles. “I learned from the best.”

He hums as he lets his fingers stroke her arms, lingering on the tattoos on her wrists. A cross and a snake. 

“Kate,” he says after a while and he’s not even sure she’s still awake.

“Hm?”

“I missed you too.”

Her hand finds his and she squeezes it sleepily. He exhales deeply, feeling like a year’s worth of burden just got lifted from his aching shoulders. 

When he regains consciousness, Kate’s warmth is gone from his side. He lifts one heavy eyelid. The right side of the room is empty, but he hears voices coming from the door on his left. He turns his head slowly, all too aware of the ache in his neck, in time to see Kate step aside to let a tall black man into the room. 

The man walks to the bed and sits on the edge of it, dumping a heavy looking bag at his feet.

“I’m Doc,” he says as he takes out some medical equipment from the bag. “I’m a friend of these assholes.”

“I’d say nice to meet you but I’d have preferred not to be in need of a doctor.”

Doc snorts. “Believe it or not, it’s mutual. Can you tell me what happened?”

Seth closes his eye. “Got kidnapped. Tortured. Punched a lot too. Don’t know for how long.” He glances at Doc. “Lost consciousness several times. Threw up at least once. Don’t know if I was drugged or not.” He racks his memories for more information. “Had to get a blood transfusion from Kate. I can’t see out of my left eye.”

Doc nods and inspects his face. He carefully opens Seth’s left eye and flashes a light in it. He flinches. “It’s just from the swelling.” 

Seth lets out a relieved sigh. Doc moves his hands from his face to his torso, examining bruises and lifting bandages to look at the cuts that were stitched. Seth hisses between his teeth when Doc touches his ribs. 

“Bruised ribs, but nothing broken.”

“Lucky me.”

Doc snorts again, then grabs his stethoscope and listens to Seth’s heartbeat, and then his lungs. Seth lets his attention drift from Doc’s ministrations to the door, where he hears laughter. Richie looks disgruntled, glaring at the two Latino guys from earlier and a white one, all of them dressed like they escaped from a Harley Davidson convention. They flip their hoods up and walk away and Kate looks amused by the whole thing. Richie briefly talks to her and then he’s gone as well, and she’s closing the door and walking to the bathroom.

“Well,” Doc says after a while. “Your blood pressure is low and you definitely have a concussion, but you’re not dying anymore. Congrats,” he adds dryly.

“Fantastic.”

“I’m gonna give you anti-inflammatory medication to help reduce the swelling and put you on an IV to replenish your fluids, but other than resting and icing your, well, at this point, everything, there’s not much else we can do.”

Doc gives him the pills with a glass of water, then leaves the room to go get the IV supplies from his car. 

He comes back a few minutes later, the three other guys behind him. The youngest looking one, Miguel, if he remembers correctly, puts two greasy paper bags on the kitchen table.

“I’m calling Kisa,” the white man he’s pretty sure he hasn’t met yet says with a weirdly British-sounding accent. Are culebras international now? Seth saw the guy flip his hood earlier, and he’s apparently part of Kisa’s group, so surely he’s a culebra. But a British one?

Miguel just nods, takes knives out from a bag and sits down on the second bed. 

The last man, Diego, glances at him and Doc, who’s busy setting up the IV pole and bags next to the bed. “Where’s Kate?” he asks in a gruff voice.

“Bathroom,” Doc replies without looking at him. 

Richie chooses that moment to come back, a giant cup in hand. He strides through the room and sits down on the armchair, sucking on his straw. 

“Looking good, brother,” he says with a smirk. 

“Fuck off.”

The bathroom door opens and Seth is really glad Doc isn’t listening to his pulse anymore given how it skyrockets when he sees Kate, only in a towel wrapped around her, her hair soaked and dripping down her collarbones, seemingly not caring about the fact that she’s pretty much naked in the company of six grown men. Doc is prepping Seth’s arm for the IV, but the three other guys barely glance at her, like it’s a common occurrence. Richie is gaping a little. At least Seth isn’t the only one.

“We got your food,” Miguel says, and the British guy just points at the table.

She comes further into the room, like she’s looking for something.

“Here,” Diego says, holding a duffle bag out, even though Kate hasn’t asked for anything. 

“Thanks,” she replies with a smile as she takes the bag, and everything about her speaks of a level of comfort and trust Seth finds himself jealous of. 

She catches him staring as she walks back to the bathroom. She frowns. “What?”

Seth mumbles a “nothing” and looks down at his arm where Doc is inserting the IV. The bathroom door closes again and Seth wills his heart to calm the fuck down. 

When it opens again, Kate is thankfully dressed, but his heart starts racing again when he recognizes the shirt she’s wearing. It’s the henley he gave her right after Matanzas, when they were sitting in front of a motel room drinking cheap tequila. His stomach twists at the idea that she kept it all this time. 

She sits at the table, takes out a burger from one of the bags and starts eating. 

“So, what’s the diagnosis?” she asks Doc after demolishing half her burger. Seth can’t help but be relieved to see her eat like that. He remembers all too well the way she used to pick at her food, barely getting anything in her. 

Doc snorts. “The diagnosis is that you dumbasses should stop throwing yourselves into potentially fatal situations.”

She tilts her head, gives Doc a flat look and takes another bite of her burger. Seth has never seen someone chew in such a threatening manner and he’s both impressed and slightly freaked out. He’s pretty sure that if he hadn’t been dying the day before, he would also be turned on, and he hates himself a little for that. 

Kate just stares at Doc and the three guys look at them in silence and Seth gets the distinct impression that Kate is the one calling the shots in this group. Not that it surprises him one bit.

Doc sighs. “Plenty of rest, plenty of fluids, ice for the bruises, Ibuprofen for the rest. You didn’t fuck up the stitches too badly.”

“Glowing praise coming from you,” Kate deadpans.

“Keep the IV in for the next two days and make sure he eats.”

“That’s it?”

“Yep.”

“Thanks, Doc,” she says, but Doc waves at her as if to say “whatever”, then he takes out a few IV bags from his duffle and puts them down on the bed before going to the door. 

“I wanna say take care of yourselves, but I know it’s useless with you lot,” he says to her.

She gives him a smile. “We can try.”

“Yeah, you do that,” Doc answers in a way that tells them he doesn’t believe her for one second, before he leaves the room and closes the door behind him.

Kate picks up her burger and finishes it.

“What’s the plan?” the British guy asks after several minutes of utter silence where it feels like they’re all just waiting for her to say something.

She shrugs. “You heard Doc. Two days on the IV.”

“So we’re staying here two more days?” Miguel asks and Seth starts to wonder how a situation that really involves only him and Richie has become a “we” situation for the rest of them.

“I am,” Kate says. “You can go back to the compound if you want. We have two vehicles between us.”

“We’re staying,” Diego immediately says in a tone that leaves no room for negotiation. Seth has the feeling that the guy has a protective streak a mile wide when it comes to Kate. He can relate, but still, they all really don’t have to get involved.

“Does anyone want to know what I want to do?” he asks.

They all shut him down at the same time and he really doesn’t know why he was expecting anything else.

Richie snorts loudly. Seth turns to glare at him. 

“What the fuck are you laughing at?”

“You.”

“I will shoot you in the face, Richard.”

“No one is shooting anyone,” Kate declares. Seth turns back in her direction. She’s walking toward him, one of the paper bags clutched in her hand. She puts it down on the nightstand, then looks at the three guys. “Here’s the plan,” she says. “I want one of you to call Kisa, let her know we’re coming back in two days. We also need someone to get him,” she points at Seth, “some new clothes and finally _please_ go find me some tequila because I don’t have my ID on me and none of you fuckers will get carded.” She claps her hands together and makes a twirling motion with her index finger. “ _V_ _ámonos_.”

The impressed and freaked out and would-be-turned-on-if-not-half-dead feeling comes back full strength. The guys leave the room and she turns to him. 

“You. Eat.”

He really doesn’t know how to deal with any of this. She was bossy in Mexico, that’s for sure, but this is a whole new level and he has a feeling that if he were to pull any of the shit he pulled with her back in the day, she would eat him alive and he wouldn’t even be mad about it.

“Is he having a stroke?” he hears her ask Richie, who just laughs.

“I think he’s just trying to adjust to this new version of you.”

Seth clears his throat and tries to regain some countenance. 

“I’m right here,” he grumbles and Richie laughs again, the asshole.

“We know.”

Kate smirks at him. “Eat your burger, Seth.”

[ ](https://tuntematonkorppi.tumblr.com/post/643766509421953024/what-does-it-matter-how-my-heart-breaks-part-ii)


	5. Part III - 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “She insisted on coming to rescue you,” Kisa interrupts, her tone more gentle than before. “I wasn’t lying when I told Richie she’s one of my best fighters. For her sake, I would have preferred that she have a normal human life, but we all know that it wasn’t in the cards anymore. Not after she set foot inside the Twister, and even less after Amaru. She chose her own path, Seth, and she’s doing pretty well these days.”  
> Seth steps forward toward the desk and refills his glass. “I guess I should thank you, then,” he says, and his voice doesn’t sound as sarcastic as he wants it to be.  
> Kisa tilts her head and smirks. “I didn’t do it for you.”  
> Seth huffs a laugh. “Yeah, well, I can still be grateful, right?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A new chapter! A full day early!  
> Yeah I'm gonna be super busy tomorrow so instead of making you wait 'til Monday I decided to post early. Yay, go me.

Three days stuck in a motel room teaches Seth a few things. The first one is that almost dying takes _a lot_ out of you. He spends most of his time sleeping or fighting sleep or dozing off. When he’s somewhat conscious, Richie and Kate make him eat and drink more water than he’s ever drank since he was fourteen. Which leads to the second thing he learns: he can get fed up with burgers and fries. The third thing is that having to rely on his brother to move around when he needs to shower or piss fucking sucks. The fourth thing is that Kate can hold her liquor. Scarily so. 

The last thing he learns is that these three other men are completely devoted to Kate. She bosses them around and they pretend to protest and grumble but they always end up doing what she says. They joke with each other, the type of good natured ribbing that only comes with spending a lot of time with each other and Seth knows he could be jealous of the intimacy the four of them have, but he isn’t. It’s the first time he’s seen Kate so carefree, smiling and laughing at the men’s antics, looking completely at ease and comfortable with them. There’s no tension in her shoulders, no dark circles under her eyes. She eats without picking at her food or pushing it around the plate for hours. She doesn’t clean her guns obsessively. She doesn’t startle when Diego puts a hand on her shoulder, or when Miguel cleans a cut on her arm. He doesn’t know about nightmares, though. They’re sleeping in the room next door and Richie is the one sleeping on the other bed in this room. 

“Don’t worry, brother,” Richie says the first time they all leave the room to go to sleep. “Nothing romantic happening there.”

Seth squints at Richie. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to,” Richie says with a shrug. “The way you looked at them when they left was enough. You need anything before I go to sleep?” Seth shakes his head. “Alright. Get some rest, you need it.”

Richie turns around in his bed and turns off the light.

“How do you know there’s nothing romantic?” Seth asks despite his best efforts to stay silent on the matter. Kate’s romantic life is none of his business. He shouldn’t care. He shouldn’t. And yet, here he is, taking the bait Richie laid out for him, hook, line and sinker.

Richie sighs and rolls over so he can face Seth’s bed. “I’m pretty sure Dorian and Miguel are together and I heard Diego call her “little sister” like fifty times since I first met him.”

Another thing Seth learns in those three days: the British Culebra’s name is Dorian. 

“Now, can I _please_ sleep?”

If he wasn’t half-dead and hooked up on an IV, Seth would definitely throw a pillow at Richie’s face. He’s the one who brought up the issue, he only has himself to blame. As it is, Seth just sighs. 

“Yeah.”

Richie rolls on his other side. Seth slouches against his pillow, wincing when it pulls on his ribs and a stitched wound or five.

“Hey, Seth,” Richie says a couple of minutes later. 

Seth turns his head towards him but his brother doesn’t roll over again. “What?”

“I’m glad you’re not dead.”

Seth snorts. “Yeah. Me too.”

After three days, he’s free of the IV and can walk and stand without needing Richie’s help. He’s still tired as hell and everything still hurts, but he doesn’t feel half dead anymore. Just sore and frustrated. 

It has apparently been decided that he and Richie would follow Kate and the men back to Kisa’s compound. When that happened, he doesn’t know, but after they pile their stuff in the trunk of the car, Kate and the guys get in their truck. Richie starts the car and they all leave together.

Seth hates being in the passenger seat, hates having nothing to do but watch the landscape outside. Not that it changes much. Desert, desert, dirt, desert. He falls asleep against the window and he must really look like shit because Richie doesn’t put on obnoxious music or mock him for his nap when he wakes up.

It’s late at night when Richie parks the car next to Kate’s truck. The buildings they’ve stopped in front of are in the middle of nowhere, nondescript blocks of concrete surrounded by dry grass and rocks. 

Kisa is waiting for them in front of a door. They get out of the car and follow Kate and the others to the entrance.

“Seth,” Kisa greets him. “You look less like shit.” 

He rolls his eyes. “Thank you, your worshipness,” he replies, hoping to imbue as much sarcasm as he can in his voice.

He must succeed because Kisa huffs a dry laugh and turns around. “C’mon, lunch is ready,” she says as she walks back inside.

“Who cooked?” British dude asks.

“Youmna. Her arm is almost grown back entirely.”

Seth scrunches up his nose. He’s aware of the regenerative powers the culebras have and, yes, it’s very practical, but the visual that pops in his head is less than pleasant. For a moment, he wonders if it works like the alien in _Men In Black_ before promptly deciding that he really doesn’t want to know. Especially not before eating.

He senses Kate’s amusement next to him, but before he can ask her what’s so funny, her three guys rush toward the common room and she takes off after them, Kisa and Richie staying behind with him. Walking any faster is not on his agenda for the day.

“We’ll need to talk after lunch,” Kisa tells them with a serious face. 

Richie nods.

Seth sighs. “Yeah, whatever.”

When they get to the common room, it’s to a table full of people hollering and whistling.

“Hey, nobody trash talks my team,” Kate shouts over everyone else.

“You just did!” a guy protests.

Kate grins and takes the knife she keeps at her hip out of his sheath, flipping it between her fingers a couple of times. “And I’m the only one who can,” she says sweet and threatening at the same time and Seth dies a little inside.

She holds out a hand and her three teammates give her their guns. She puts all the weapons on another table, then comes back and sits on the bench next to Diego. Seth takes her left and Richie sits down on the other side. A woman with dark tan skin, short black hair and one arm shorter and skinnier than the other passes plates full of delicious smelling food around and Seth has never been happier not to eat a burger.

Kisa’s people talk about missions and potential new altar and Seth kind of tunes them out, his attention entirely on the warmth Kate’s body is radiating next to him, on the fact that he’s sitting next to her at all, that she’s fine and healthy. 

“Send me pictures of the explosion,” he hears her say and he glances at Richie for an explanation because he missed the entirety of that conversation, but his brother just smirks.

When they’re done eating, Kisa catches their eyes and jerks her head towards the door, a clear sign that the time to talk business has come. They follow her through the compound, passing what looks like a gym, then a fighting ring, until they get to a room that looks just like their incident command back at Jed’s. Purely functional desks, whiteboards, corkboards, all of it covered in pictures, maps, and paperwork like a crazy detective wall. 

Richie lets out a low appreciative whistle, turning around on himself to take it all in.

“So,” Kisa starts, leaning back against a desk and crossing her arms. “What happened back there?”

“It was a trap,” Seth replies.

“We trusted the intel,” Richie says at the same time.

Kisa raises an eyebrow. Richie looks at him and Seth waves at him to continue.

“It was supposed to be a small operation,” Richie says. “All the intel we had on Ozona was telling us the same thing: dangerous and active but small.”

“But it wasn’t.”

Seth sighs. “No. It was a trap made for me. The fuckers have been studying us. They knew only I would go if they made it look like it was only ten guys.”

“So now they’re leaving fake clues behind, is that what you’re saying?”

Richie nods. “Yeah. You haven’t had any trouble with yours?”

Kisa rolls her neck until it pops. “Things have been harder since we lost Lazlo,” she admits. “But nothing like your situation.” She uncrosses her arms and rounds the desk. She takes a bottle of tequila out of a drawer, along with three glasses. “Do you remember anything from when they had you?” she asks Seth as she pours the drinks. 

Seth takes the glass she hands him and swallows half of it. “Leader said his name was Willet. Rat faced motherfucker, about yea high, cowboy hat.”

Richie and Kisa exchange a glance. 

“What?” Seth asks.

“It’s not the guy Kate and I confronted,” Richie says and Seth feels the hair on the back of his neck bristle at the mention of Kate facing any rogue culebras.

“Yeah, that’s another thing that requires some explanation,” he mumbles into his glass. 

Kisa rolls her eyes. “Ask her. It’s not my place,” she says then takes a sip of her drink.

Seth snorts. “Oh no, she did explain some stuff to me, what I’m still unclear on is how we went from ‘Don’t worry, Seth, I’ll keep an eye on her and she’ll never know’ to ‘Hey Kate, wanna come be Buffy with me and my band of merry misfits?’ And since we’re talking about it, whose fucking idea was it to bring her to that goddamn warehouse when she’s their fucking target?”

Kisa slams her glass down on the desk. “Hers,” she says sternly, her eyes intense and piercing on him. “And I gave her the offer to join us after I spent _months_ watching her get chased by rogues, leaving her life behind and running from shitty motel to shitty motel across the state. We tried to keep them away from her because I thought like you, that she was living this fucking normal life, except guess what, Seth? She wasn’t and me staying away was doing _nothing_ to help her. I gave her a choice and _she_ chose to come here. _I_ didn’t kidnap her,” she finishes, the unspoken _unlike you_ a final blow. 

Seth clenches his jaw. Deep down, he knows she’s right. Kate herself told him as much. But he still can’t help the wave of anger and frustration washing over him. If he was completely honest with himself, he would realize that jealousy is also part of the mix. Jealousy that Kisa was there to help Kate when he wasn’t, that Kate chose to join her instead of coming back to them, even though he knows now that it’s their own expectations of her living a normal life that kept her at bay in the first place.

“Seth,” Richie starts like Seth is a wild animal that needs soothing.

“She insisted on coming to rescue you,” Kisa interrupts, her tone more gentle than before. “I wasn’t lying when I told Richie she’s one of my best fighters. For her sake, I would have preferred that she have a normal human life, but we all know that it wasn’t in the cards anymore. Not after she set foot inside the Twister, and even less after Amaru. She chose her own path, Seth, and she’s doing pretty well these days.”

Seth steps forward toward the desk and refills his glass. “I guess I should thank you, then,” he says, and his voice doesn’t sound as sarcastic as he wants it to be.

Kisa tilts her head and smirks. “I didn’t do it for you.”

Seth huffs a laugh. “Yeah, well, I can still be grateful, right?”

“Not to shatter your moment,” Richie says, “but what do we do with the intel we get from now on?”

Seth sighs and Kisa groans and refills her glass. 

They start strategizing but stop when a clamor rises from outside the room. Seth looks at Richie who seems as confused as he is, but when they turn to Kisa, she’s actually grinning. 

“The hell is going on?” Seth asks her, but she just steps away from the desk and toward the door. 

“Come on,” she says over her shoulder, “Show’s about to start.”

Seth turns to Richie. 

“Don’t look at me,” his brother says with a shrug.

They follow Kisa out of the room and towards the noise. The fighting ring they walked by earlier is now surrounded by a crowd. Seth sees Diego and the British culebra on one side of the ring, Miguel stepping down from it, and his heart stops beating for a second when he catches Kate on the other side of it. She’s only wearing a sports bra with a pair of sweatpants, her hair tied up and her hands wrapped up in tape, her skin already glistening under the harsh light of the room. She rolls her neck and shoulders and gets into a fighting stance. Seth’s mouth feels suddenly extremely dry.

Out of the periphery of his vision, he’s vaguely aware of Miguel taking bets, but all he can focus on is Kate and the two culebras in front of her. She’s grinning, her arms raised in front of her, her center of gravity low and stable. She looks like she belongs on that ring, in that compound that is more military base than anything else.

“Oh, you’re in for a treat,” Kisa grins next to him.

Miguel shouts “FIGHT” and Kate pounces. She’s light on her feet, quick and vicious in how she strikes. She easily dodges Diego’s arms, only stumbles a little when evading a kick from Dorian. Seth can see how they don’t keep to one martial art style, how they mix traditional forms with techniques taken straight from dirty street fights. This is not fighting for the beauty of it. This is training for real life situations. The men rush her at the same time but she manages to step away and punches Diego in the kidneys hard enough that he drops to his knees. 

Around him, the crowd shouts, money exchanges hands, and Kisa’s grin has a proud edge to it.

Kate can’t dodge Dorian’s next strike and she stumbles back, bleeding from her nose.

“Sorry!” Seth hears Dorian call.

She smirks. “I’m not,” she replies before tripping him and elbowing him in the chest. 

Diego surges behind her, pinning her arms on each side of her and Seth worries that she’s done for, but then she just throws her legs up and around Diego’s neck, completely folding on herself and then she yanks forward. The crunching noise coming from the ring as they fall on the ground is sickening. Seth isn’t the only one wincing in the crowd. 

Miguel shouts “WEAPONS” and people in the audience throw a knife, a stick and two batons on the ring. Kate is the first one to react, rolling forward to grab the knife before Dorian gets back on his feet. She stands up and twirls the blade, grinning, confident and cocky, her hair plastered to her forehead, her skin shining with sweat, and she’s the most beautiful thing Seth has ever seen in his life. 

“Are you giving up, boys?” she asks. 

Diego stands up and twists his neck until it cracks and the sound is even more awful than the first time. Even Dorian seems disturbed. Kate grins and rushes to them with her blade out, kicking Diego away to focus on Dorian, who dodges her attack easily and blocks the hand holding the knife. Seth can only gape when he sees Kate actually open her right hand and let the knife fall into her left one, catching it and swinging at Dorian’s chest in one swift movement. Dorian just looks annoyed as he tears away the remnants of his shirt and she just grins. He charges her again, this time punching her in the jaw. Seth winces as she falls to the mat. She rubs at her cheek and spits out some blood. Then she reaches backward, grabs a baton and launches it at Dorian’s face.

“That’s my girl,” Kisa says next to him for no one in particular.

Seth doesn’t have time to find her words weird because Diego takes advantage of an opening and he and Kate grapple on the floor until she gets on top and holds the knife over his chest.

She mouths something at him and Seth is too far away to hear it, but then Diego seems to relax into the mat, all the tension of the fight disappearing from his body.

Then Kate stands up and helps him up.

“One down, one to go!” Miguel shouts as Diego steps down.

Kate wipes her face as she turns around to face Dorian, who’s holding the baton she has just thrown at his face. She drops the knife and grabs the stick instead. The rest of the fight is a blur of baton and stick clashing, Kate and Dorian circling each other and then rushing relentlessly until Kate backs Dorian into a corner, the end of her stick over his heart like she’s ready to stake him. 

“Do you yield?” Seth sees her more than he hears her ask breathlessly, her chest heaving from the effort.

Dorian drops the baton.

The crowd cheers and Miguel climbs on the ring.

“Undefeated five times in a row—” he starts at the top of his lungs.

“Six,” she cuts.

Miguel glares at her, but the fond smile on his face kind of undermines it. “Lemme do my job, kid,” he says. “Fine,” he sighs after she gives him a look. “Undefeated, _six_ times in a row, Kate, leader of team _pendejo_!”

“Hey, who you calling a _pendejo, cabrón_?” Dorian protests and Miguel turns around slightly to blow him a kiss.

Kate leans closer to Miguel but Seth is too far away to be able to hear what she says. Besides, that would require him to actually focus and the entirety of his brain power is being used to try and process what he just saw. She just wiped the floor with two grown men—scratch that, two grown _culebras_ —and it was probably one of the hottest things Seth has ever seen in his life. He’s never gonna be able to see a knife again without thinking about how it would look being twirled between her fingers.

Kate gives the crowd a playful salute, then she steps down from the ring. People immediately surround her. She’s smiling, laughing at something the woman who gave them food says. She high fives Dorian and Diego, then winces when Dorian pokes at the cheek he punched and she bats his hand away, still laughing. She knocks her shoulder against Miguel, doesn’t shrug off the arm Diego drapes around her shoulders. 

Seth watches the four of them move in each other’s spaces. They seem aware of where the others are at all times, even when they can’t see each other. Seth realizes that the comfort and familiarity he witnessed in the motel room after they rescued him was only a tiny glimpse of the real thing. He can’t recall a time where Kate has been more relaxed, more at ease, than now. 

“Alright, alright, back to work!” Kisa calls, saving him from the inevitable downward spiral his mind was taking him into.

People around them groan, but the room clears out, Kate leaving with the rest of them, surrounded by her three teammates. 

“Holy shit,” Richie says once they’re alone. 

Kisa smirks. “Do you trust me now, when I say that she can take care of herself?”

“I already knew that,” Richie replies. “She’s the one who planned Seth’s rescue, and that plan was batshit crazy.”

Seth’s eyes snap up to Richie’s. “What?”

His brother nods. “Oh yeah, I haven’t told you yet, but it was incredible.”

Kisa snorts. When Richie doesn’t elaborate, Seth raises his eyebrows at him and makes the universal “go on” gesture. Richie grins.

“The guys who had you called me, right? They wanted me to bring them Kate in exchange for your life and I didn’t have enough people to outnumber them so I called Kisa, who showed up with Kate and her team. I wasn’t expecting that.”

Kisa rolls her eyes. “You yelled at me.”

“Yeah, well, can you blame me?” Richie counters. Kisa huffs, unrepentant. Richie turns back to Seth. “Anyway, at this point, we’re not outnumbered anymore but we still need a plan. And Kate says ‘well, they want you to deliver me to them, right? Then we’re gonna do just that.’”

Seth swallows. “I'm sorry, she offered herself as _bait_? And you went with it?”

Richie shrugs. “We didn’t have a better plan.”

“Jesus Christ,” Seth mutters as he rubs at his face. He wonders if retroactive heart attacks are a thing. It feels like it’s what’s happening to him at that very moment. 

“It worked,” Richie says and Seth really wants to shoot him in the face. 

After debating strategy for dealing with the rogues a while longer, Kisa shows them to their rooms, which are little more than glorified monk cells, but they have a bed and a pillow and that’s all that matters at this moment. Seth changes into the pair of sweatpants one of Kate’s boys got him and collapses on the bed. 

He expects to fall asleep in seconds. He’s still exhausted from his recent brush with death, he finally has a room to himself after days of being surrounded by people, his entire day—no, his entire _week_ —has been an emotional rollercoaster, so he should be unconscious the moment his head hits his pillow, right? 

Wrong.

Alone, in the silence and darkness of the room, he can’t keep his mind from throwing him back into the cell. It’s warm under the blankets, but he shivers, unable to shake the feeling of ice cold water hitting his bare chest. He turns on his side, curls on himself, winces when it pulls on his stitches.

His jaw aches. He’s been favoring his other side while eating, but he’ll need to see a dentist. Loose teeth are never fun. 

He closes his eyes again.

Jerks up a few minutes later when he sees one of his captors coming closer with a scalpel in his hand.

“Fuck,” he mutters as he scratches his head with both hands.

He forces himself to breathe deeply. He’s not about to have a panic attack in Kisa’s compound. He’s fine. He just needs to—what exactly?

He sighs, lies back down again. 

He needs to think about something that isn’t the cell. He focuses on Kate, ruthless on that ring, grinning with blood on her teeth, laughing with her teammates. He remembers how she looked as she played with her knife, how it felt to have her next to him as they ate all together. How peaceful it was to have her in his arms that first day after they rescued him. How she slotted herself against his chest carefully, her head on his shoulder and her arm around his torso, how he fell asleep like that. 

He startles awake some indefinite time later. He doesn’t remember the nightmare, but the fear tastes bitter in his mouth and his heart hammers painfully against his chest. He rubs a shaky hand over his face, almost expecting it to come away bloody.

He checks his phone. It’s barely seven in the morning and he’s far from rested, but he can’t try to sleep again, not when he feels like he’s going to drown if he stays in that room a second longer.

He grabs his gun, tucks it in the waistband of his sweats and leaves the room. He finds the armory easily enough, sits at a table and takes out his gun. He disassembles it, cleans it, oils it. By the time he puts it back together, his hands are no longer shaking.

He tucks it back in his pants.

He still feels queasy, still on the edge of a fight-or-flight response, like the walls are closing in on him and the next time he blinks he’ll be tied to a chair.

He leaves the windowless armory and prowls through the hallways until he finds the entrance of the compound. His lungs expand the moment the fresh air hits his face. The sky is clear, blue and immense above him, and he hears a hawk cry. He exhales, the last shred of his adrenaline surge leaving him. 

When he tears his eyes away from the sky, he notices someone sitting in the dry grass a few yards away from the building. There’s only one person that he knows of that could be outside in the sun. 

He walks to her and stops a few feet away. She’s looking up at the sky, a mug in one hand, the other supporting her as she leans back. She’s barefoot, wearing an oversized flannel shirt with its sleeves rolled up and soft looking shorts, more relaxed than he’s ever seen her. He almost feels like an intruder.

Almost.

“Mind if I join you?” he asks.

She turns around and smiles softly. “Sure,” she says, before looking back at the desert.

Seth crosses the distance between them and sits down next to her. “Nice showdown last night,” he says.

She chuckles and he can’t help but marvel at the sound. Then she takes a sip of her coffee before offering it to him. He shakes his head, remembering too well the cream and sugar she dumps in it.

“It’s black,” she says like she read his mind.

He raises an eyebrow and feels like an idiot. She changed. Of course she changed. It’s been almost two years since she left and she became an entirely new person in that time. She learned how to fight, she became part of this group, became part of something bigger. The change in how she likes her coffee now should be the least surprising thing about this entire situation.

He takes the mug and swallows a mouthful. It’s not as dark as he would make it, but it’s stronger than what anyone else would consider normal.

He stares at the hills on the horizon, listens to the hawk circling above them. Next to him, Kate seems to be doing the same, comfortable in their silence.

“So,” he starts without watching her, because he’s a coward who doesn’t want to see the expression on her face when she hears what he has to say. “This is your home,” he says and his voice sounds strangled.

“This is where I live,” she replies evenly.

He swallows around the knot in his throat. “Is there a difference?”

She doesn’t answer right away. He turns his head to her and she catches his eyes, shrugs. He nods. He knows the feeling. Home is a hard thing to grasp when what you knew as home was ripped away from you. Or burned to the ground. 

“Richie and I are going back to Jed’s tonight,” he says. They decided that the night before, knowing they can’t leave their operation unattended for long, even more so with the increased threat of the rogue culebras. They have intel to review, altars to destroy, culebras to turn to ashes.

No rest for the wicked, and yet he wishes he could stay there, drinking coffee and watching the desert with Kate.

“Okay,” she says and she sounds a little unsure.

“I’m not gonna ask you to come with us,” he tells her, because she has to know that he isn’t expecting anything from her, that he isn’t waiting for anything. He doesn’t want her to feel burdened by his stupid expectations anymore.

She hugs her knees to her chest and leans her head on top of them. “Why not?” she asks and she sounds genuinely curious.

He touches the snake tattoo wrapping around her wrist before he can overthink it. She has a multitude of tiny scars, little white dots and lines on her arms, but the one that catches his attention is above her elbow, longer, slightly raised and uneven. He wants to ask her about it, and about the one he caught a glimpse of near her collarbone. 

He clears his throat. “Because I might be a selfish bastard, but I want you to be happy. And I’ve seen you with these people. With your team. They’re more than that,” he says quietly.

She nods against her knees. “They’re like family to me,” she says like a confession and it hurts to hear it. It hurts because being her family is all he wanted, even though he knows she deserves so much better than him. He’s glad she found it somewhere, no matter how much it tears his heart apart.

“Yeah,” he says and he drops his hand back at his side. “I can tell. They’re good to you.” _Unlike me_ , he doesn’t say.

She grabs the hand back. “Seth, you’re good to me too.”

He snorts, looks down at her hand squeezing his, holding on tight. “I’m really not, Princess.”

“Shut up.”

He looks up to find her staring at him. “Wha—”

“Shut up, Seth,” she repeats and her hand tightens around his. “I get to decide what’s good for me or not. Not you. Not anyone else. Me.”

“Ka—”

“I’m not done. The guys are my family. But you and Richie… We’ve been through too many things to pretend there isn’t something there. You’re my family too,” she says sternly and his heart misses a beat or two at her words. “I don’t care if you’re still drowning in self pity. So stop being a fucking martyr, okay?”

She looks at him, the expression on her face earnest, almost desperate for him to believe in her words and he can’t breathe and this time it’s not because of a panic attack. He’s overwhelmed with how _good_ she is, despite all the shit life has thrown at her. How ready she is to see him as more than a criminal, a fuck up, an addict. 

Fuck. He loves her. 

He laces his fingers with hers, too choked up to trust his voice enough to speak. She doesn’t seem to mind, giving him a tiny smile before leaning her entire body against him, her head against his shoulder and her legs practically on his. 

He detangles their fingers only to wrap his arm around her, pulling her tight against him, and he doesn’t resist the urge to kiss her forehead.

She sighs and sags a little more against his chest. “I don’t want you to go,” she says, her voice slightly muffled by the fabric of his shirt. “But I know you can’t stay either. And I’m not leaving my team.”

“I know. I get it.”

“It doesn’t mean I won’t drive down to Jed's to visit.”

He swallows and nods. “If you want to.”

“Do _you_ want me to?” she asks and he can’t believe that she thinks there’s a reality in which he wouldn’t want her next to him. 

But he can’t tell her that. He doesn’t want to freak her out with his stupid fucking feelings.

“If I had it my way I’d be kidnapping you right now,” he says then scrunches up his nose at his choice of words. 

Kate doesn’t seem bothered, though, and laughs. “Yeah, bad idea, Dorian and Miguel would track you in less than an hour and Diego would try to smash your head like a watermelon.”

He nudges her a little. “Only try?”

“I would stop him.”

“How nice of you.”

She takes the mug back from his other hand and takes a sip, still leaning against him. 

He never wants this moment to end. It feels like a reverse of that last night at Jed’s, watching the sunset and drinking mezcal to cast their demons away, getting ready to watch her leave in the morning with no guarantee that he would ever see her again. 

The sun is high in the sky and she’s healthy, strong, and she’s not alone anymore.

They finish the coffee, but she doesn’t make a move to get up so he doesn’t either.

“Hey,” he says softly.

“Hm,” she answers, half asleep.

“Thank you. For, you know, saving me.”

She snuggles closer, like he’s a pillow and she’s getting comfortable for bed. “Let’s not pass blood between us again, yeah?”

He chuckles. “Sounds like a plan, Stan.”

One of his legs is starting to go numb, but he’s pretty sure Kate has fallen asleep and he doesn’t want to wake her up.

The hawk is still up in the sky, joined by a second one, their cries the only sounds reaching them. 

It’s only when he starts falling asleep himself that he decides to move. He nudges Kate lightly and she groans.

“C’mon, Princess. Let’s get you to bed.”

“Hmm, ‘m comfy here.”

He chuckles. “Your neck will thank you.”

She nuzzles in the crook of his neck and Seth is pretty sure he just had a mini heart attack. She seems intent on not moving, so he gathers her in his arms and stands up carefully. She loops her arm around his neck and that’s the only sign she gives him that she isn’t completely passed out. 

“Gonna have to point me to your room, Princess,” he says once they’re back inside. 

She mumbles some vague directions that he hopes are the right ones. He’s not interested in opening someone else’s door. Especially not one of her teammates’. Not when he has her in his arms like this.

He carefully pushes open what is supposed to be her door and lets out a relieved sigh when the room is empty and he spots her holsters and guns on the desk. He puts her down on the bed and pulls the blankets over her, then smooths out her hair away from her face. 

“Sleep well,” he murmurs as he presses a kiss to her temple. 

“Hey,” she mumbles and blinks her eyes open.

Seth huffs a laugh. “Now you’re waking up.”

She gives him a sleepy smile. “Stay?” she asks.

He shouldn’t. He really shouldn’t. But the idea of lying down in his bed, alone in the silence and the darkness, his memories just waiting for him to lower his defenses to jump on him makes him want to find a needle and plunge it in his vein. 

So he puts his gun next to hers on the desk, climbs in the bed behind her and just lets himself enjoy her presence. She rolls on her other side to face him and slots herself back against him. She drapes her arm across his torso and her breathing evens out minutes later.

Seth stares at the ceiling for a while. When he finally allows himself to close his eyes, there’s no vision of the cell, torture instruments or Kate bleeding out in the church. He inhales the scent of her shampoo and he falls asleep with his fingers tracing patterns on her bare skin. 

When he wakes up, she’s still sleeping. He doesn’t know what time it is but he can hear the sounds of people moving around on the other side of the door. 

He carefully removes his arm from under her and slips out of bed. He takes back his gun and pauses when he gets a good look at hers and recognizes the gun he gave her when she left. He glances at her, still deeply asleep. 

He leaves her room silently and finds his way back to his. He takes a quick shower then leaves in search of his brother. He pokes his head in the common room but finds only culebras he doesn’t know. He finally finds Diego in the kitchen, who directs him to the command room where Richie is indeed studying one of the crazy walls.

“Hey, brother,” Richie says when he sees him. “Ready to roll?”

Seth gestures to the wall. “Anything interesting?”

Richie smirks. “No traps,” he says, “you have nothing to worry about.”

Seth squints at him. “Not what I asked.”

“But what you meant,” Richie replies, his voice idle and challenging at the same time, like he’s daring Seth to contradict him. 

Seth rolls his eyes and shakes his head, but decides against trying to reason with his brother. His last coffee was over ten hours ago and he doesn’t have the brain power for Richie’s bullshit. 

They exit the base at the same time as Kate and her team. Dorian and Diego are carrying heavy looking duffle bags to their truck, Seth can see at least five knives on Miguel and Kate has a belt of stakes strapped to her thigh in addition to her shoulder holsters and the knife sheath at her hip.

“Kisa’s working you into the ground?” Richie asks when they reach them.

“Damn right she is,” Miguel grumbles.

Seth looks at Kate. Her hair is tied up away from her face and in the lights of the garage, her eyes shine greener and brighter than usual. “Where you heading?” he asks before his brain shuts down completely.

“Santa Anna,” she replies with a shrug. “Should be a quick one.”

“Yeah, we don’t have to rescue anyone this time,” Dorian comments with a smirk as he walks past them.

Kate throws him an annoyed glance and Seth watches him go back to the truck. Miguel and Diego join him but she doesn’t make a move toward them. 

Richie goes to the car with a “be safe out there” and it’s just him and Kate. He wants to tell her many things, but now is not the time, not when they’re not truly alone, not when he’s leaving. 

“Be careful,” is what he chooses to say, because it’s the most neutral thing he can think of.

“You’re the one who got captured,” she replies with a smile.

He huffs a laugh and rolls his eyes. “Alright, smartass,” he says but he knows he sounds more amused and fond than annoyed. He pulls her into a hug. “I’d say I trust these guys to protect you but from what I saw last night, they don’t really need to.”

He feels her grin wider against his neck. “Damn right they don’t.”

He pulls back so he can look at her in the eye, his hands on each side of her face. “Don’t be a stranger, okay?” he says, and if his voice is hoarse and cracks a little at the end, well it’s nobody’s problem but his.

She closes her eyes, leans into his hands. She takes a deep breath and opens her eyes. 

“I’ll see you soon,” she says and she sounds a little choked up too.

He forces himself to smile. “You better,” he says softly before kissing her forehead. He inhales deeply, wants to engrave this moment in his mind forever. 

“We gotta roll, brother!” Richie calls from the car and Seth has never wanted to shoot his brother in the face more than he does right now.

He sighs. “Great timing as always,” he mutters and Kate laughs and steps away.

“Don’t kill Richie,” she says playfully, walking backward in direction of the truck.

He snorts. “Yeah, no promises,” he replies as he goes to the car.

She climbs in the back of the truck and the door slams behind her. 

He glares at his brother and settles in the driver’s seat. 

“Wanna tell me what that was?” Richie asks from the passenger seat. 

“No.”

They follow the truck through the desert for a couple of hours before turning southward. 

Seth can feel Richie’s eyes glancing between the road in front of them and the side of his face. He doesn’t take the bait, doesn’t roll his eyes and sigh and bark out a frustrated “What?” while glaring at his brother. He stares straight ahead and presses his lips together. He doesn’t need Richie pointing out the obvious, meddling into his business and making him feel like shit for doing the right thing. 

It feels like an eternity later when they reach Jed’s. He drives around the back and parks the car in the garage. He doesn’t wait for Richie to finally say what’s on his mind, just grabs his bag out of the car and goes to his room without looking back.

He goes to the bar just long enough to say hi to Kalinda, who, between two glares in Marney’s direction, looks more than relieved that they’re back, and to grab a bottle of scotch from behind the counter. 

Then he climbs up on the roof and opens the bottle. He takes a swig. 

He hopes Kate’s job in Santa Anna went well. He hopes she’s safe.

[ ](https://tuntematonkorppi.tumblr.com/post/644311157102034944/what-does-it-matter-how-my-heart-breaks-part-iii)


	6. Part III - 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “—ate,” they hear Miguel say and groan some more, obviously in a huge amount of pain. “It was a trap,” he pants. “They took Kate.”  
> “What?!” Seth yells at the phone, his hands tightening on the steering wheel. “Dorian! Dorian, what the fuck is going on?!”  
> There’s some clatter on the other end, then Dorian’s voice, tense and clear and steady, like he’s forcing himself to remain as calm as possible because otherwise he might completely lose it.  
> “The job was a trap. The rogues took Kate, Miguel has a wooden beam sticking out of his chest, Diego’s whereabouts are unknown. I’m sending you our location now.”

Seth tries to be more careful. He really does.

But he’s either getting way too old for this shit or the rogue culebras are getting more brazen, or both. 

His shoulder never completely heals and some days he wakes up and can’t lift his arm all the way up over his head. More than once, a fall or a hit that he would have brushed off before becomes a _thing_. Too many concussions. Ribs bruised or broken too many times. 

He’s less hot headed during raids, takes fewer stupid risks, and yet he still comes back with new injuries, new wounds, new scars.

The truth is, he’s tired. Deep in his bones, he’s utterly and profoundly exhausted. 

There are no more traps, but that doesn’t mean the raids are easy. On the contrary, the rogues appear more and more desperate, more ruthless, the violence turning up to eleven. Richie makes him sit out a few, despite all of his protests. He can fight. He can still take care of those bloodsucking assholes. But Richie doesn’t budge, and something in his brother’s voice ends up convincing him. Fear, maybe. Concern, for sure. 

He texts Kate sometimes. She tells him it’s a lot of work to keep up with all the new altars and nests that seem to pop up left and right. He tries not to worry too much over her safety and fails. Not much he can do, he knows that rationally, but still, when she tells him that Miguel got his arm blown off or that Diego almost died, he can’t help but freak out a little. If even her culebra teammates are getting fucked over, how the fuck can he stay calm? She might be extremely good with a gun and as skilled as himself in hand to hand combat, but she’s still human. Still mortal. Just like him.

The texts come at all hours. No pattern, not even between night and day. He wants to ask her if she’s sleeping, if she’s having nightmares, but what good would that do? He can’t hold her in his arms and shield her from the horrors her subconscious throws at her. Just like her presence can’t soothe the demons that plague his own sleep. 

He tries not to rely too much on alcohol to get some shut-eye. With his family history, it would be too easy to go from there to full blown raging alcoholic, and he has no intention of becoming his piece of shit father, fuck you very much. 

But on the nights when Richie is out on a job, when the bar is mostly empty and nothing requires his attention, it’s harder to resist. 

So he goes to the bar and sits at the counter and asks Kalinda or Luisa for a drink and pretends that this doesn’t count as drinking alone. 

“How’s Kate?” Luisa asks as she wipes the counter in front of him. 

He looks up from his glass. “She’s alive. Last time we talked she’d had to stab Dorian in the throat.”

Luisa raises an eyebrow. “Any reason for that?”

He shrugs. “He was asphyxiating.”

“Aye, _Dios M_ _ío_.”

He hums and brings his glass to his lips. 

“You think she’s gonna visit at some point?”

He downs the last of his drink and sucks on his teeth. “She said she wanted to, but with the mess that it is out there, I don’t know.” He pushes the glass toward her, a wordless signal for a refill. “Not sure she’ll have the time.” 

She uncaps a bottle. “You know, if she comes, it’d be nice to redo the living quarters,” she says, her eyes on the new drink she’s mixing him.

“Hm?”

She glances up. “I’m just saying. They don’t feel super homey.”

He squints at her, still not saying anything. 

She throws her hands in the air, and apparently he’s not getting something that she thinks is abundantly clear subtext. “You really want your girl to sleep in what is essentially a warehouse backroom?”

He glares at her. “She’s not my girl.”

She rolls her eyes and waves, like she wants to chase his words away. “Details. Besides, do you think it’d be good for her to come back to a place that hasn’t changed at all? Given that the last time she was here was right after her possession? The girl wasn’t fine, Seth. You don’t want to bring those memories back.” She gives him back his glass. “Think about it,” she says sternly before turning away and disappearing in the back. 

Seth does think about it. And loathe as he is to admit it, Luisa is right.

A week later finds him alone again with nothing to do. He goes to the bar, sits on his usual stool. Luisa is taking care of a group of truckers at the other end of the counter, so he turns around to survey the restaurant until she’s done. 

Kalinda is in charge of the floor, not that there are many patrons on this fine Sunday night.

“‘Evening, Boss,” she greets him when she comes back from taking a couple’s order.

“Hey, Peach. Everything good?”

“Same old, same old,” she replies with a smile before disappearing into the kitchens.

Luisa finishes with the truckers and comes to his side. 

“The usual, _Jefe_?”

“Yep.”

He watches her mix his drink in silence.

“Something on your mind?” she asks as she gives him the glass.

He takes a sip. “I thought about what you said.”

She raises an eyebrow and the corner of her lips tugs up. “I say a lot of things.”

He smiles, rolls his eyes a little. “About redoing the living quarters.”

“Really?”

“Mh-mm.” He takes another sip. She does make good cocktails. “Do you have a, uh, vision, for that?”

Her tiny smirk morphs into a large grin. “Oh, do I ever.”

He chuckles. “Great. You’re in charge, then. I’ll clear it with Richie.”

She lets out a little disbelieving laugh and her eyebrows go up to her hairline. “Just like that?”

Seth downs the rest of his drink. “Just like that.” Then he stands up. “Don’t make me regret it, Lu,” he says before going walking away.

She laughs.

He and Richie haven’t been on a job together since his rescue, the logic being that someone needs to hold down the fort and that if one of them (aka Seth) gets in trouble, at least the other (aka Richie) will be in a position to deal with it. 

Seth would never admit it out loud, but he misses fighting side by side with Richie. Sure, he has a team that he mostly trusts, but there’s nothing like being on a job with his brother, not needing to talk to understand each other, knowing each other so completely that they can predict their movements, being able to speak in code if needed.

But the arrangement works and they avoid any new traps and even if the rogue culebras are going batshit crazy, they’re dealing with it somewhat efficiently.

From what he gathers from his texts with Kate and Richie’s phone calls with Kisa, they’re also managing okay up north, blown off arm and quasi-fatal asphyxiation notwithstanding.

Which is why, when Richie’s phone rings one night and the first thing they hear when they pick up is the echo of several gunshots, Seth knows that shit has hit the fan, and has hit it _hard_.

“We’re less than an hour away from you,” Dorian’s voice shouts over the firefight, followed by what is distinctively an explosion. 

Seth’s blood freezes in his veins. If _Dorian_ is calling them, then it’s worse than anything he could’ve imagined. It means that Kate isn't in a position to call them herself and he really doesn't want to go there. He clenches his fists to keep his hands from shaking.

“Dorian?” Richie calls. “Dorian, you there?”

They exchange a glance and start gearing up, grabbing guns and ammo and exiting the office, headed in the direction of the garage.

“Dorian, man, talk to me,” Richie says into the phone when Dorian still doesn’t answer.

They hear him cough. “Yeah. Fuck. We need back up. Already called Kisa, but you’re closer,” he says, breathing hard like he’s running. “Fuck,” he repeats, more to himself than to them. “Miguel?!” The fear in his voice is crystal clear. “Miguel, what the—do not fucking move, you bloody idiot, what the fuck are you doing?!”

There's a groan as they get in their car and it sounds like Dorian just put his phone on the ground.

Seth turns on the ignition and peels out of the compound.

“—ate,” they hear Miguel say and groan some more, obviously in a huge amount of pain. “It was a trap,” he pants. “They took Kate.”

“What?!” Seth yells at the phone, his hands tightening on the steering wheel. “Dorian! Dorian, what the _fuck_ is going on?!”

There’s some clatter on the other end, then Dorian’s voice, tense and clear and steady, like he’s forcing himself to remain as calm as possible because otherwise he might completely lose it.

“The job was a trap. The rogues took Kate, Miguel has a wooden beam sticking out of his chest, Diego’s whereabouts are unknown. I’m sending you our location now.”

They get to the location Dorian sent them forty minutes later, Seth flooring it the entire way. The place can’t even be qualified as a town: a gas station abandoned since at least the seventies and four buildings at different stages of collapsing, one of them more than the others. Kate’s truck is nowhere to be seen.

Seth jumps out of the car.

“Dorian?” he shouts.

“In here," comes Dorian's voice from the half destroyed building.

He rushes in with Richie. Inside is a mess of collapsed walls and fallen beams and they have to navigate around holes in the floor to avoid falling into the basement. They reach Dorian, kneeling down next to Miguel who’s on his stomach, impaled on a piece of wood. Seth pauses. Miguel looks almost resigned, and Seth sees his mouth moving, like he’s reassuring Dorian, who is grasping Miguel’s hand with both of his.

“Holy shit,” Richie says when he sees the scene.

“I can’t take it out by myself, I need someone to hold him,” Dorian says, sounding guilty and terrified.

“It’s gonna be alright, _Amado_ ,” Miguel mumbles, but his conviction doesn’t go further than his voice and they all know it.

Richie clears his throat. “Okay, let’s do this. Dorian, hold his shoulders. Seth, I need you to stabilize his lower body.”

They get in position, then Richie takes a hold of the beam.

“Nobody fucking move,” he orders before pulling it out.

Seth can hear Dorian mumbling something under his breath, like a prayer, and he wonders who he’s praying to. Miguel groans and curses as the beam leaves his torso with a disgusting wet noise.

“We have—” Dorian says shakily. “We have blood bags in the truck.”

“Your truck isn’t here,” Seth says.

Dorian looks up sharply. “What? No. Fuck.”

“We have some,” Richie says and he jerks his head at Seth as he and Dorian help Miguel sit up.

Seth gets to his feet and hurries to the car. He finds the cold storage box in the trunk, grabs two bags from it.

Richie and Dorian, half carrying Miguel, step out of the building. Dorian sits Miguel down and Seth passes him the bags.

“If the truck isn’t here, it means that either Diego is out there tracking them or—” Dorian says, trailing off. Miguel looks at him, frowning as he sucks on the blood bag, shaking his head as if to say "don't go there."

“Or?” Richie prompts.

“He’s dead and the rogues have taken the truck to keep us from following them,” Dorian finishes somberly.

Seth clenches his teeth. If it’s option number two, then they have no way to find Kate. Now that the adrenaline of saving Miguel has worn off, his fear for Kate kicks into gear and he’s going to shoot something if they don’t have a plan soon.

Miguel’s phone goes off, saving Seth from spiraling down further. Miguel takes it out of his pocket, his movements slow and careful. 

“It’s Diego,” he says before picking up. “Yeah?”

“The _pícaros_ have Kate,” Diego says in a low voice. 

“Yeah, we know,” Dorian replies tiredly. “Where the fuck are you, man?”

“I tracked them down. I took the truck, you have a ride?”

Dorian sighs. “Yeah, the Geckos are here.”

“Good. Sending you the location.”

They drive to the hills on dirt roads. In the backseat, Seth can see Miguel wince every time they hit a pothole, Dorian glancing at him every five seconds like he’s going to disappear into thin air.

Diego is waiting for them next to a quarry, his truck hidden by the slope of the hill.

“Where are they?” Seth asks the second he gets out of the car.

Diego nods toward the quarry. “The old mining building.”

Seth checks his guns. “How many people?”

“A dozen.”

Seth turns to Richie, who’s taking his shotgun out of the trunk. “We’ve faced worse odds, right?”

“Depends if Miguel is okay to fight,” Richie replies with a glance to Miguel who’s walking to the truck.

“Of course I’m fucking okay to fight. It’s _Kate_ ,” Miguel says viciously.

Dorian looks like he’d rather have him stay in the truck and gulp down more blood, but he doesn’t say anything, just opens the door to the truck to grab a crate full of stakes.

“Gear up,” he tells them.

The plan is relatively simple. Richie and the other three will go in guns blazing, providing a distraction and a meat shield for Seth, who, being the frail human that is, will infiltrate and locate Kate.

They move silently down the hill and across the quarry, the moonlight lighting up their path. Richie and Diego take out a few sentinels, staking them from behind and muffling their dying shouts as they burn, but not before one whacks Seth in the head. He blinks the blood away from his eyes, and when he doesn’t feel any dizziness, figures that it’ll be a problem for another day. Once they have Kate and all those fuckers are dead.

With the perimeter cleared, Richie nods to Seth. Seth rounds the old building to the back entrance and slips inside. He takes careful steps to avoid making the old wooden floor creak too much. He can barely see a thing inside, the windows boarded shut and blocking the moonlight. He has no idea where to go until he hears the most chilling scream, a cry coming from the gut, like a cornered animal howling in desperation.

_Kate._

He can’t breathe for half a second.

But his body reacts on autopilot, rushing toward the sound, his gun raised and ready. He rounds a corner, sees the open door. There’s a man standing inside the room and Seth recognizes his silhouette, the cowboy hat. Then he sees Kate, chained up behind him, her eyes wild with terror as the man raises a hand toward her face. 

Seth runs as another inhuman shriek is torn out of Kate’s lungs. He lines up his shot and squeezes the trigger. The man’s head explodes and splatters all over her. 

She’s still screaming as Seth rushes to her. He searches the corpse until he finds the keys to the chains, then fumbles with the locks around her feet. He’s too focused on getting her out to hear Richie and Diego arrive in the room, but one moment he’s alone and the next they’re ripping the chains from her wrists.

Kate doesn’t calm down once she’s freed. She screams, batting their hands away and wiping at the blood in her eyes, backing away until she hits the wall. She slides down to the floor and curls in on herself, the screaming replaced by heart wrenching sobs.

Diego approaches her carefully.

“ _Mija_ ,” he calls quietly, crouching down in front of her. “Katie, it’s over,” he says. He reaches out, barely touching her shoulder and she screams again. Diego recoils like she shot him and his face closes off. 

Seth feels Richie’s eyes bore into him. He licks his lips, swallows thickly. 

“Can I try?” he asks Diego, his voice hoarse and raspy like he’s the one who’s been tearing his vocal chords out. 

Diego glances at him and nods curtly. Seth goes to Kate and kneels next to her. She’s not screaming anymore, but her breathing is labored. She’s not inhaling deep enough and if she keeps that up she’s going to pass out.

“Kate,” he says softly. “Kate, you need to breathe.”

She’s gripping her arms, crossed over her stomach, shaking her head as if to tell him that she can’t.

“C’mon, princess,” he murmurs. “Breathe.”

She’s still hyperventilating.

“I’m going to touch your arm now,” he tells her, hoping his voice sounds more confident than he feels.

He brushes her arm and she doesn’t scream again. He gently pulls her away from the wall, takes one of her hands in his and brings it to his own chest.

“Follow my lead. Breathe in. Come on, Kate, you can do this. C’mon.”

Her face is covered in blood and brain matter. The hand on his chest curls into the fabric of his vest, the other joining it to do the same. He cups her cheeks, wipes the blood away from her eyes with his thumbs.

She opens her eyes and they’re glistening with fear and tears, but she seems to recognize him.

“Just keep breathing,” he says and she nods. He leans her forehead against hers, feeling his exhaustion catch up with him. “Keep breathing,” he repeats and he’s not sure if he’s saying that for her or himself. She wraps her arms around his neck and hides her face in the crook of his neck. “It’s over,” he tells her, petting her hair despite the gore in it. “I promise.”

He waits until her breathing calms down completely. 

“Can you stand?” he asks her. 

She nods.

He gets to his feet carefully, ignoring the pain in his joints from kneeling too long on the cold hard ground. She almost collapses when she tries to stand up but he grasps her arm and pulls her against him. She leans her head against his chest and he knows she’s not going to stay conscious long enough to walk out of there. He gathers her up in his arms.

A glint of silver catches his eyes as he starts walking toward the exit. 

Amaru’s necklace is lying a few inches away from the hand of the dead man. He clenches his teeth. 

He looks up at Richie and Diego. They have seen it too. 

“Destroy that fucking thing,” he grits out.

He carries her out, sees the relief on Dorian’s and Miguel’s faces when they find him after killing the last of the rogues.

“Is she okay?” Miguel asks.

“Exhausted,” Seth replies. 

They walk up to where they left their vehicles. Dorian opens the back door of the car for him and he lays her down on the backseat. Richie and Diego join them a few minutes later.

“What now?” Richie asks.

“Amulet is destroyed?” Seth replies instead.

Diego nods. “A pile of ashes.”

Seth sighs. “Good.” He looks up at the sky, finds it lighter than it was when they got to the quarry. Not enough time to get back to Jed’s before sunrise, even if they break every speed limit on their way. “Let’s find a motel.” He throws his keys at Richie. “You drive.”

Richie finds them a motel and books the last two rooms, one single and a double. Kate doesn’t stir when Seth carries her out of the car. Diego opens the door to the single for him and Seth lays her down on the bed. Then he sits down heavily on a chair and lets out a deep, relieved sigh. 

“Fuck,” he mutters as he rubs at his face. He winces when he touches his forehead. Flakes of dried blood speckle his fingers. He completely forgot about that wound.

“I need to sleep,” he hears Miguel say outside. Dorian replies, and Diego’s and Richie’s voices join in, but Seth doesn’t try to understand what they’re talking about. 

Kate is sound asleep, and safe, and that’s all that matters to him.

“You tell us the moment she’s awake,” Diego says, his voice suddenly much closer than before.

Seth blinks up at him and nods. “Yeah.”

Diego closes the door behind him. 

Light filters in through the flimsy curtains and Seth figures that the room will be flooded with sunlight in a couple of hours, so he stands up despite feeling like he hasn’t slept in a year and closes the blinds.

He puts one of his guns on the table, checks the barrel of the other and tucks it in the back of his pants. Then he brings the chair closer to the bed and sits back down.

He doesn’t mean to fall asleep, fully intent on keeping watch over Kate, but he startles awake when he hears her calling him with a raspy voice.

“Hey,” he replies and he’s so grateful to see her conscious.

She moves her hand closer to him and he takes it. It’s warm and soft against his skin and she’s _alive_ and _here_.

He exhales shakily. “Fuck.”

“Is it over?” she asks.

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s fucking over. For good this time. I promise.”

She closes her eyes and he sees a tear roll down her cheek. He stands up from the chair and sits on the edge of the bed, pushes a few strands of hair away from her face and lets his hand linger on her head.

He wants to bend down and kiss her.

“I’m gonna tell the others you’re awake,” he says instead.

Her hand tightens around his and she opens her eyes. “Don’t go. Please,” she says and something in his chest twists painfully. 

“They’re just in the next room,” he says, hoping his voice sounds as reassuring as she needs it to be. “I said I would tell them as soon as you woke up. They’re gonna break down the goddamn door if I don’t,” he adds, trying to imbue some levity in his voice and make her smile. 

It doesn’t work.

“Don’t leave me,” she practically begs him. 

“I’m not,” he utters, pushing through the tears that threaten to spill over. “I’m never leaving you again, Kate. I’ll be right back, I swear.”

He bends down, presses his lips to her temple, her forehead, trying to show her that he’s never going away again, that he’s here and here to stay.

He forces himself to stand up and step away before he ends up overwhelming her with his feelings.

He knocks on the other door. To his surprise, Kisa is the one who answers it. He had no idea she was even here.

“Hey,” she says. “Is she alright?”

“Yeah. She just woke up.”

Behind her, Diego and Richie stand up from the table where they were apparently playing cards. Dorian and Miguel look up from the bed. 

“C’mon,” he says with a nod toward Kate’s room.

His heart lurches at the relief that crosses her face when he opens the door again, the culebras filtering in behind him.

“Where’s Miguel?” she asks, desperation tinting her words.

“He’s fine,” Dorian replies immediately. “He’s—”

“I’m right here,” Miguel says from the back of the group, pushing past them and striding to the bed, followed by Dorian and Diego. 

Seth watches as they all pile up around her on the bed, letting her touch them and touching her in return, like they all need the physical reassurance that they’re all here and whole. 

“I thought you were dead,” she says quietly to Miguel, her hand on his chest. 

“I’m right here,” he answers. 

Dorian takes her other hand. “We’re not going anywhere.”

She slouches against Diego and Seth sees his face relax, like he’s relieved that she’s touching him after what happened at the quarry. Seth can understand how he feels. He doesn’t know what he would have done if she reacted to him that way.

“I can’t lose you,” Kate says. Then she looks up at him, Richie and Kisa. “Any of you.”

“You won’t,” Kisa tells her. “It’s all over now.”

Seth, being the only person not allergic to the sun who’s not currently bedridden, goes on the food run. He turns on the radio in the car, doesn’t want the silence or the space to hear himself think. 

He stops at the first burger joint he sees, orders enough food to feed a small army. He even gets horchata for everyone but him. He doesn’t know if anyone but Kate and Richie like the stuff, but if they don’t, he’s sure his brother will be more than happy to drink it all. 

He drives back to the motel room. Kisa and Richie are sitting on chairs in the shadows in front of the door, having what looks like a serious talk. 

Seth exits the car, grabs the multiple bags of burgers and fries, the tray of drinks, and joins them.

“What’s going on?” he asks as Richie happily takes a cup and starts slurping it through the straw.

“They’re sleeping,” Kisa says.

Seth raises his eyebrows. “All of them? On that one bed?”

Kisa snorts. “See for yourself.”

He puts down the food and opens the door as quietly as he can. Kate is lying on her side, tucked against Miguel, her head on his shoulder and her arm slung around him. Dorian is on her other side, one leg thrown over hers, one arm extended across her torso, Miguel grasping his forearm. Diego is a bit higher on the bed next to Miguel, like he started half sitting against the headboard and slouched down more and more, curling over the heads of the other three.

Seth snorts lightly and Diego opens an eye and frowns. Seth mouths “food” at him and closes the door.

“Didn’t know culebras were part-time puppies,” he says to Kisa. 

She chuckles. “We’re not. They’re just special.”

Richie passes her a burger, then Seth. Seth sits down on the ground in the sun and unwraps it. The door opens behind him. Dorian and Miguel take their share of the food and two cups of horchata and go to the other room, grumbling about the sun and how rude it is to be woken up in the middle of their night. Diego comes out with Kate and hovers as she sits down next to Seth. Then he takes his burger and fries and follows Dorian and Miguel in their room. 

They eat in silence, enjoying the warm sun on their faces. 

Kate leans against him once she’s done and Seth can tell she’s close to falling asleep again. He nudges her gently. 

“Let’s get you back in bed,” he tells her.

She yawns and nods. He helps her up and walks her back to the room. She lies down on top of the covers and falls asleep almost as soon as her head touches the pillow. He watches her for a beat, then goes back outside. He takes a bag of fries and leans against one of the columns lining the building, watching the cars drive by on the highway and popping fries in his mouth one at a time.

“I’m going back to Mexico,” Kisa says after a while.

Seth glances at her. “To do what?”

She shrugs with a smile. “I don’t know. Whatever I want, I guess. There’s no more lords. No more rogue culebras. No obligation to do anything.”

“What about all the people at your compound?”

She takes a cup of horchata. Now that’s a sight Seth would have never thought he’d see. The vampire queen, drinking horchata from a neon orange straw. 

“They can come with me. Or they can stay. They can do anything they want, Seth. They’re free.”

Richie jerks his head toward the door. “What do you think they’ll do?”

“They’ll stay with Kate, whatever she chooses to do.”

Seth looks away.

He hopes she’ll decide to stay with them at Jed’s. He won’t say anything to her, won’t try to influence her choice in any way, but he hopes, still.

He goes back inside, finally taking the time to clean his guns and his head wound and let Richie and Kisa have their awkward exes moment alone. 

He can’t keep from glancing at Kate every couple of minutes, on alert for any signs that she’s having a nightmare, ready to wake her up and comfort her. 

He’s texting Kalinda and Luisa, telling them that he and Richie will probably be back the next day when Kate stirs and jerks up, a choked up cry escaping her as she opens her eyes.

He’s by her side in a flash. 

“Hey, it’s alright, you’re alright,” he says softly as she grips his hand. 

“Seth?” she mumbles, blinking blearily. 

He guides her back to her pillow, smoothing her hair back gently. “I’m here.”

“Don’t leave,” she murmurs and closes her eyes. 

“I’m right here,” he says, his thumb rubbing circles in the soft skin below her ear. “I’m right here.”

Richie, Diego, Dorian and Miguel come in the late afternoon. They settle around the table and play cards. Seth can see that Richie has trouble staying quiet, but every time he almost shouts in victory or frustration, Diego glares at him before glancing at Kate, still asleep on the bed.

Seth is sitting on the floor at the foot of the bed, reviewing a shipment manifest and reminding Kalinda that no, she really can’t murder Marney no matter how annoying he is. 

Kate stirs and wakes up just as night falls and everyone but the two of them leaves to get some, as Richie calls it, “proper food”.

“Do you want to eat?” Seth asks her, because it’s been a few hours since the burger and he knows all too well that eating is important for recovery.

She sits up in bed and shakes her head. “I need a shower,” she says. And yeah, she does. He tried to clean the blood from her face when they were in the car, but nothing is going to help the situation in her hair except for a shower and a shitton of shampoo.

She swings her legs on the side of the bed and he stays near her, ready to catch her if she collapses again. Her legs seem weak and unsteady, but she doesn’t lean on him to get to the bathroom. 

He stops in the doorway, already self conscious about what he’s going to say next. “Hey, um, don’t lock the door? Please.”

Not that he wouldn’t be able to knock down the flimsy door if he heard her fall in the shower, but he’s sure his shoulder and the rest of his body would appreciate not having to do that.

She nods and starts pushing the door closed, but freezes halfway through the motion.

He frowns. “Kate?”

“I don’t have any other clothes,” she says in a low voice, looking down at herself and her blood stained and torn clothes.

“I might have something in the car. I’ll be right back.”

She nods again. 

He hurries to the car, pops open the trunk and is grateful for Richie’s tendencies to overpack. His brother is the one who insisted they always have a least a few changes of clothes in their vehicles and for once, he was right. Not that Seth will ever tell him that, obviously. Richie’s head is big enough as it is.

He goes back inside with a henley and a pair of boxers for her and a complete change for him.

When he gets to the bathroom, she’s leaning against the sink, examining her bruised face in the mirror. He leans against the doorframe.

“You gonna be okay in there?” he asks, ready to go get Kisa if she does need someone. 

She turns around and takes the clothes. “Yeah. Thanks,” she says, then closes the door. 

Seth strips and changes into his fresh clothes, then finally allows himself to lie down on the bed. He doesn’t let himself fall asleep, all of his attention focused on the bathroom and the potential sound of Kate collapsing.

It doesn’t take her long to come out of the bathroom wearing his henley and shorts and his mouth gets very dry at the sight of the too large collar revealing her collarbones, her wet hair rapidly soaking the fabric. However, his brain doesn’t have the time to go into overdrive, she crawls on the bed and snuggles directly into his side. He doesn’t even mind the wet-cold feeling of her head on his chest.

“Thanks for coming for me,” she whispers. 

And fuck, she gotta know right? How could she not? 

He rolls on his side so they’re facing each other. He tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, lets his fingers trail down the side of her neck. “I’ll always come for you. You gotta know that. And I don’t care if I have to move in Kisa’s lair, but I’m never letting you out of my sight again.”

She smiles. “I’m okay with that.”

“We’re gonna have to get you a giant bed if those boys of yours keep piling up in it like a bunch of puppies. We’ll end up crushed to death otherwise,” he says, ignoring how his heart beats painfully against his chest. Maybe he’s assuming too much here. Maybe she’s going to freak out at his choice of words.

“You're assuming they'll let you in the bed,” she replies playfully and his chest unclenches. 

He nudges her in the ribs. “I thought you were the boss of them.”

“They’re very protective,” she replies with a shrug and yeah, he knows they are. 

She shuffles forward until she’s plastered against his chest, her head slotted under his chin, and wraps her arm around his waist.

He freezes for a second, then wills his body to relax. 

“Did they say when they’ll be back?” she mumbles in his shirt.

“Nope. Probably gonna be away all night,” he replies, carding a hand through her hair.

“Mm-mh.”

“Wanna sleep some more?”

“Hm.”

He takes his gun from the back of his pants, slides it under his pillow, then drapes his arm around her. “‘Night, Princess.”

The door creaks open and Seth twists around with his gun raised before he’s even properly awake.

“Just me, brother,” Richie says quietly from the door.

Seth puts the safety back on and rubs his eyes. “What d’you want?”

“Just checkin’ in.”

“Hm. We’re sleeping. Fuck off.”

Richie chuckles. “Fair enough,” he says, then closes the door. 

Seth lies back down. 

Kate groans and blinks up at him. “‘S goin’on?”

“Nothing,” he tells her, brushing his hand down her arm. “Richie. Go back to sleep.”

She lets out a little snuffle and cuddles closer to him. 

The next time he wakes up, it’s morning and Kate is lying half on top of him, her face against his neck. He goes through the list of every bank job he and Richie have ever pulled, retracing the blueprints in his mind and remembering the security schedules, in order to get his body’s reaction to her under control.

Once he’s sure nothing incriminating is happening anymore, he gently shakes her shoulder.

“Hey,” he says softly.

Kate only groans in reply. 

“C’mon, Princess, let me up.”

He could totally move her and get up if he really wanted to, but he doesn’t want to dislodge her when she looks so goddamn comfortable. 

“No,” comes the replies in his neck and feeling her lips move against the tender skin there makes him die a little inside. 

Then her stomach rumbles loudly.

He laughs. “C’mon let me go and get us some breakfast.”

She grumbles and rolls around. He tries very hard not to think about how cold he feels now that she isn’t pretending to be an octopus around him. 

“Be right back,” he tells her and she hums. 

Kate Fuller, not a morning person, he notes in his head.

He knocks at the other door on his way to the car. 

A very bleary eyed Dorian opens the door. “What?”

“Kate’s still asleep. I’m going for a breakfast run. Want anything?”

Dorian shakes his head and closes the door again. 

When he comes back with breakfast burritos and black coffee for the both of them, Kate hasn’t moved.

She rolls over when he steps inside the room, pushing her hair away and rubbing at her face and being the cutest thing Seth has ever seen in his entire life.

“Coffee?” she asks with a yawn.

Seth snorts and gives her a cup. She takes it with a mumbled thanks, inhales the steam and sighs happily. 

They’ve just finished eating when there’s a knock at the door. Richie, Kisa and the others come in.

“I’m going back to Mexico,” Kisa tells Kate. “Texas was always supposed to be temporary until we dealt with those Amaru bootlickers. You can come with or you can stay here. It’s your choice, _mija_.”

Kate turns to Diego, Dorian and Miguel, and he sees the panic in her wide eyes. Diego puts his hands on her shoulders.

“Whatever you decide, we’re staying with you, kiddo,” he says.

She seems surprised. “You are?”

“You’re our _hermana_. You’re family,” Miguel says. “It’s gonna take more than that for you to get rid of us, remember?”

She chuckles. “Are you okay with us moving to Jed’s with them?” she asks them, pointing at him and Richie.

Dorian glances at them and shrugs. “We weren’t exactly expecting anything else.”

Her expression turns suspicious and she squints at the men. “Was there a bet?” she asks.

“Nope,” Dorian replies and even Seth can see that he’s full of shit. 

“You’re a terrible liar. Stop making money off my back or share the profits, you motherfuckers,” Kate says but she doesn’t sound as annoyed as she probably wants to and it sounds like there’s a story there.

Seth hopes she’ll tell him one day. They’ll have time, now that she’s coming back to Jed’s, he thinks, and the reality of the situation hits him like a train.

She’s coming back.

She’s coming home.

[ ](https://tuntematonkorppi.tumblr.com/post/645029488561897472/what-does-it-matter-how-my-heart-breaks-part-iii)


	7. Part III - 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Richie finally looks up from his screen. “Aren’t you gonna share with Kate?”  
> It takes Seth a second to process what his brother just said. “What?”  
> Richie shrugs like he’s perfectly innocent. “Last time she was here we never set her up in a room.”  
> “Last time she was here she was _traumatized_ and afraid to be alone, Richie.”  
> “Beside,” Richie continues like Seth didn’t say anything. “You two seemed cozy in that motel.”  
> “Jesus Christ,” Seth says, then rubs his hands over his face.  
> “I’m just saying—”  
> “Nope,” Seth cuts him, standing up from his chair. “You are not saying anything and this conversation is over,” he says as he exits the office.  
> “For now!” Richie calls after him.

Seth and Richie drive back to Jed’s the next day and Kate, Kisa and the others go back to their compound to announce to the rest of their people that the rogues are gone and to let them decide what they want to do next.

“We need to pack our stuff up too,” Kate says as they’re all standing near their vehicles, ready to drive in opposite directions away from the motel.

“Not that we have that many things,” Miguel adds. 

“You have a gym in this place of yours?” Diego asks.

“Sure we do,” Richie replies with a grin, then he points at Seth. “You think this guy looks like that naturally?”

Kate snorts.

Seth rolls his eyes. “Alright, let’s go. Let us know when you’ll be there.”

“Will do,” Kate replies with a nod.

Diego, Dorian and Miguel get into the truck and Richie goes to the passenger seat of their car, but Kate lingers.

“Drive safe,” he tells her.

“Yeah. You too.” She steps closer, a little hesitant. He waits, sensing that she wants to say more, gives her the time she needs to decide. 

Instead of talking, she just wraps her arms around his waist and hugs him. His arms automatically go around her and one hand goes to her hair.

“Thank you,” she says softly against his chest.

He gently steps away, just barely, just enough to be able to see her face. “For what?”

She shrugs and smiles. “Just—thanks.”

He frowns but smiles at the same time, still confused about what it’s about, and she lets him go and turns to her truck with one last little handwave. 

Seth blinks and gets in the driver seat.

“You okay, there, brother?” Richie asks with a smirk.

Seth glances at him. “She thanked me?”

“For what?”

“I don’t know.”

Next to them, the truck rumbles to life then drives out of the parking lot. Seth watches until he can see it anymore.

“You’re planning on driving at some point or are we staying here one more night?”

“Shut up, Richard.”

Two days later, he gets a text from Kate.

“They’ll be here in four days,” he tells Richie who’s doing some accounting at his desk.

Richie doesn’t even look up. “Who?”

“Kate and her guys.”

“Good. Luisa can take care of the room assignments, right?”

“Sure.” He types a brief reply to Kate, sends it, and turns back to his computer. “I’ll tell her when I see her.”

“Won’t be hard to find two rooms.”

Seth’s fingers freeze above the keyboard. “Two? You planning on making Diego bunk with someone?”

Richie finally looks up from his screen. “Aren’t you gonna share with Kate?”

It takes Seth a second to process what his brother just said. “What?”

Richie shrugs like he’s perfectly innocent. “Last time she was here we never set her up in a room.”

“Last time she was here she was _traumatized_ and afraid to be alone, Richie.”

“Beside,” Richie continues like Seth didn’t say anything. “You two seemed cozy in that motel.”

“Jesus Christ,” Seth says, then rubs his hands over his face.

“I’m just saying—”

“Nope,” Seth cuts him, standing up from his chair. “You are not saying anything and this conversation is over,” he says as he exits the office.

“For now!” Richie calls after him.

Four days later, just as things are getting hectic at the bar, a familiar truck parks in front of Jed’s. Seth sees Kate and the three others walk in from behind the beer tap where he’s been stuck for the past thirty minutes, pouring pint after pint after pint.

He raises an arm to get their attention and they shoulder their way to the counter.

“Hey,” he greets them as he passes three pints to Kalinda and starts pouring more. 

Kate hops on a stool, Diego, Dorian and Miguel fanning out behind her like a wall of bodyguards.

“Give me one sec to finish this and I’ll show you your rooms,” Seth tells them.

“No rush,” Kate replies with a smile. 

He’s almost done with his current order and ready to tell Kalinda to hold the fort on her own for a bit when a group of at least ten people saunter to the counter. Kalinda gives him a panicked look.

Seth sighs. “Alright, change of plans.” He takes his phone out of his back pocket, presses the speed dial for Luisa, sticks his phone between his ear and his shoulder and starts mixing the cocktails Kalinda relays to him. He feels Kate’s eyes on him, but doesn’t let it distract him too much. He has mojitos to make and he hates that on a good day, so doing it during a rush while praying for Luisa to answer her phone is taking everything out of him.

“It’s my day off,” Luisa says when she picks up.

“Yes, I know, Lu, trust me, I know.”

“But?”

“We are swamped at the bar and Kate and her friends just got here and someone needs to show them their rooms and if I leave now Kalinda will have my head on a pike.”

“Eh, she hasn’t murdered Marney yet, she wouldn’t kill you for so little.”

“Not the point, Lu.” He slides four mojitos to Kalinda and starts on the Long Island Iced Teas. Who the _fuck_ comes into a truck stop and orders fucking Long Island Iced Teas? “Look, I just need you to come here, show them their rooms, give them a tour and then you’re free.”

“Fine. But you owe me.”

“When do I not?”

He hangs up and turns to Kate’s group. “Luisa’ll be here in a sec.” Then he’s back to his cocktails and his pints and the next time he glances up, they’re gone.

He catches them coming back some moments later. They grab a table, then Kate comes to the bar.

“All good?” he asks.

“Yeah, thanks.”

“Drinks? If you say mojitos I’m sending you back to Kisa.”

She smirks. “Why? You seemed to be doing well with them earlier.” He glares at her and she laughs. “Alright, alright. Four beers, then.”

When he can finally catch his breath an hour later, Diego, Dorian and Miguel are still at the table but Kate is nowhere to be seen.

He waits a bit, waiting for her to come back from wherever she’s disappeared to, and when she doesn’t, he figures that she either went back to her room or that she needed some air. He grabs a bottle from the shelf, tells Kalinda he’s taking ten, and goes up to the roof.

He opens the service door and despite the lack of light, he sees her, sitting on the concrete roof, looking up at the stars.

“Got room for one more?” he calls.

She looks at him over her shoulder. “Got something to offer?”

He huffs a laugh, holds the bottle up. She smiles and pats the ground next to her.

“What are you doing here all alone?” he asks as he sits down.

“Needed some peace and quiet.”

“You okay?”

She pushes a strand of hair back. “Yeah. I’m just not a big fan of crowds, still.”

He uncaps the bottle and offers it to her. She takes a sip. Her entire face scrunches up as she swallows, like the taste took her by surprise. He can’t help but laugh at how betrayed she looks, like this bottle of rum personally offended her.

“Why are _you_ here?” she asks and she gives him the bottle back.

He takes a sip. “Couldn’t see you down there. I was wondering where you’d run off to. Or if you had found another poor fucker to boss around.”

She smiles. “Well, I hadn’t, but now that you’re here…”

“Oh, is that how it’s gonna be?” he says playfully and knocks his shoulder against hers.

She nudges him right back. “Were you expecting anything else?”

“Eh.” He shrugs. “Not really,” he says and it’s the truth. He knew the moment she said she was coming back that she’d be the one giving the orders between the two of them. And he doesn’t care. He really doesn’t. As long as she’s here and as long as she’s happy, she can boss him around as much as she wants.

Despite her initial reaction to it, she takes the rum back from him, swallows another mouthful. They pass the bottle back and forth in silence, watching the stars.

“Richie knows all about that shit,” he finally says.

In the periphery of his vision, he sees her tilt her head to him. “Hm?”

“The stars,” he says, looking for Cassiopeia, one of the only constellations he can recognize without a doubt. “We used to spend hours looking at them when we were kids. I didn’t really care for that stuff, but Richie was obsessed, so…”

He glances at her. She’s smiling, soft and fond at the same time and he finds himself returning her smile. 

A few minutes later, she lies down on the concrete. She seems lost in thought, but not in the way she was zoning out after Amaru, just lost in her own mind.

He lies down next to her, follows the blinking lights of a plane flying far above them.

“Are you really okay? With being here?”

She doesn’t reply immediately, licks her lips. “I think so,” she says. “It’s gonna take me a while to adjust to not being a member of—what did you call it again? SWAT Culebra Edition?”

He snorts. “You gotta admit. It fits.”

“Yeah, I guess it does,” she says with a brief laugh. “I don’t really know how we’re gonna adapt to not doing that anymore,” she adds in a more serious tone.

“You’ll be fine.”

“How do you know?”

He raises an eyebrow, turns his head to her. She’s already watching him. “Take a look at all the shit you went through in the last few years. You’ve always found a way to adapt and survive, even in the worst fucking situations.” He sighs, then sits up. He scans the darkness around them until he finds the bottle, but when he grabs it, he sees that it’s empty. He puts it back down. “You always manage to make the best of anything. Even shit everyone else would see as a lost fucking cause,” he finishes and when did they get so serious? He wanted this to be a fun night for her, not...not whatever it’s turned into.

He startles when he feels her hand on his shoulder. “Are you going all martyr on me again, Gecko?” she asks with a smile, but he can hear the seriousness behind it and she knows him too well.

He smiles, or at least tries to. “Nah.”

“Good. Otherwise I would have to remind you, _again_ , that I chose you. And I will continue to choose you.”

His heart skips a beat. It’s dark, but she’s so close to him he can see how earnest she is, how much she wants him to believe in her words and he does, he believes her, he just knows he doesn’t deserve it. But she made her choice and he swore a long time ago that he would let her make her own choices, that he would respect them. She told him she knew what was good for her and what wasn’t, no matter what he thought about it.

So no, he doesn’t deserve her choosing him, but as long as she chooses him, he’s not going anywhere.

“Kate, I—”

He isn’t sure what he wants to say, and then he doesn’t have to figure it out because Marney calls him from downstairs and he has to see what the hell it’s about.

When he turns back to Kate, she’s lying back down on the roof with her eyes closed. She looks at peace, but he can’t let her fall asleep here. The desert gets cold as fuck at night and her neck deserves a goddamn pillow.

“I need to get downstairs. You coming, Sleeping Beauty?”

She opens her eyes. “I should.”

“Yep.” He squats down in front of her and holds out his hands. “C’mon, up you go,” he says as he helps her up. She sways a little when she gets on her feet and leans against his side. He snorts and wraps an arm around her shoulders. “Let’s get you back to your boys.”

They carefully climb down the stairs.

“Ready?” Seth asks when they’re in front of the door leading to the bar.

She nods. He opens the door and Marney immediately finds him and starts talking a mile a minute about tequila and stocks and whatever else. Seth nods and pretends to get what he’s saying, but his eyes follow Kate until she’s back at the table with the others. Only then does he turn his attention to Marney.

The rest of the night is a blur of noise, alcohol and drunk people. He knows that at some point Kate staggers to the counter with Diego to tell him she’s going to sleep and then Diego returns from the living quarters alone and keeps drinking with Dorian and Miguel.

Richie arrives to take over his shift and Luisa ropes Seth into drinking with her and then somehow he ends up in his bed.

He wakes up with the mother of all hangovers and he decides he doesn’t owe Luisa anything anymore. He drags himself to his bathroom, showers, and slips on a pair of sweatpants and an undershirt. He isn’t dealing with anything business related today. Richie and the others can deal one day without him.

He ends up in the kitchen on autopilot. Diego is at the stove and Richie is being an obnoxious asshole, looking fresh and well rested in a fucking suit and reading the fucking newspaper. Who the fuck still reads newspapers? Assholes, that’s who.

Luisa and Marney are talking next to the coffee machine and Luisa thankfully takes pity on him and brings him a mug. He barely registers Kate, Dorian and Miguel joining them until Kate sits down next to him and takes his mug.

“Hey,” he protests with absolutely no conviction. “Get your own goddamn coffee.” She doesn’t give him his coffee back. Because of course not. He glances up at Luisa who seems entirely too amused by the situation and waves at his former mug. She rolls her eyes but brings him a new one before refilling Kate’s.

He gets halfway through his mug before keeping his head up becomes too much effort. He crosses his arms on the table and buries his face in them.

“Do you need more time to get settled and should I start handing out assignments?” Richie asks at some point.

“I’m not doing anything today,” Kate mumbles next to him.

Richard snorts. “Yeah, I wasn’t asking the feeble humans, Katie-Cakes, I know you and Seth are useless today.”

“Fuck you, Richard,” he says into his arms.

“Prove me wrong, brother.”

Seth frees one hand and flips his middle finger up.

“Very mature.”

Some indefinite time later, a very pointy finger pokes him in the arm.

“Aren’t you supposed to have a hangover cure?” Kate asks.

He blinks a couple of times and turns his head to the side so he can see her. “What.”

“I don’t know, in the movies it seems like every functioning alcoholic has a go-to hangover cure.”

The corner of his lips tugs up. “You calling me a functioning alcoholic, Princess?”

She raises an eyebrow, looking deeply unimpressed and she shouldn’t be able to look that judgmental when he’s pretty sure she’s at least as hungover as him. “Are you denying you’re one?”

He lets out a brief laugh, which is enough to worsen his headache. “Fuck,” he groans. “Maybe I should have a hangover cure.”

“Or maybe you could stop drinking as much,” she says with a shrug.

“Yeah, you’re cute. I don’t see you faring much better.”

She grins. “Well, I’m only twenty-one, I can still pretend it’s a youthful mistake.”

He gives her a fake outraged look. “Calling me old after calling me an alcoholic? Ouch, Princess, I’m really feeling the love, here.”

“I’m sure you’ll survive.”

He rolls his eyes and buries his head back into his arms. She leans her head on his shoulder a few minutes later.

“Seriously, though. What do you do when you’re this hungover?” she asks.

He turns his head back to her and their faces are close, way too close to each other. He blinks, licks his lips, tries to think past the elephant parade stomping on his brain.

“Sleep. Or zone out in front of the Discovery Channel.”

Despite the angle, he sees her smirk. “No classic movies?”

“Classics deserve my full attention. Manatees and whatever other fuckery that lives in the fucking ocean don’t.”

She removes her head from his shoulder and stands up. “Discovery Channel it is, then,” she declares but doesn’t move.

He raises an eyebrow at her. “You need help turning on the TV?”

She gives him a flat look. “You planning on sleeping on the kitchen table?”

And yeah, okay, she does have a point. He sits up and winces when his neck and shoulder protest. He stands up, refills his mug with fresh coffee and follows Kate out of the kitchen and into the common room.

He sprawls on the couch and fiddles with the remote until getting to the Discovery Channel. Kate sits next to him and immediately cuddles against his side with her legs folded against her chest. 

He has no idea what the documentary on the screen is about. Kate leans her head on his shoulder and the fresh clean scent of her shampoo fills his nose. He moves his arm from the back of the couch to drape it around her and she burrows deeper into his side, then unfolds her legs to put them over his. 

“I’m not your personal mattress, Princess,” he says even though he’s very very okay with her using him as a pillow. 

“Shut up, you’re the reason I’m hungover.”

“Pretty sure you were drinking with your guys without me,” he points out.

“Pretty sure you’re the one who brought out the rum,” she replies in the same bored tone.

He chuckles. “Nobody forced you to drink it.”

She swats his stomach. “Shut up, I’m watching the show.”

He snorts but stops pretending he’s not okay with their arrangement. 

Five minutes later he’s struggling to keep his eyes open. Kate is breathing deeply and evenly, her weight against his side getting heavier, melting into him like he’s truly her bed. He leans against the armrest and closes his eyes. 

When he wakes up, he’s lying down with his legs still swung over the edge, Kate half resting on his chest folded on herself. He carefully straightens out his legs and brings them up on the couch, wincing when his lower back protests from spending so long in that previous position. Kate hums in her sleep and unfolds her legs before tangling them with his, shuffling and snuggling against his chest until she’s sprawled on top of him with her face in his neck. 

His sleep fogged mind wonders how the hell she can be comfortable like that, but then he yawns and drifts unconscious once more.

The next time he opens his eyes, the room is no longer illuminated by the TV screen and the remote is back on the coffee table. Kate is still deeply asleep and using him as a pillow, looking comfortable as hell even though his neck is killing him. He slowly slides her more onto the cushion and less on him so he can roll over. 

She groans.

“Stop moving,” she mumbles.

“Sorry, Princess. Gotta do something for my neck,” he says quietly as he settles on his side.

She makes a nondescript sound and scoots closer until she’s literally plastered against his chest. “Old man,” she mutters, her voice muffled by sleep and his undershirt.

He folds one arm under his head and wraps the other around her. “That’s rude,” he replies, slurring his words as sleep overtakes him once more.

The next day, he’s back at the warehouse managing shipments, then behind his desk reviewing their inventory. He’s not working at the bar that night, even though he knows that Kate and her men are there.

He has to remind himself that even though she’s here, even though she’s back, everything has changed since the last time. She doesn’t need to have him around all the time anymore. He’s glad that she’s not a shadow of herself anymore, that she’s laughing freely and joking and isn’t afraid to be around people like she used to be. 

But when there’s a soft knock at the door of his office, he can’t help but hope that it’ll be her, joining him as he works like she used to, dozing off on the couch while she waits for him to be done and bring her back to bed. 

It’s not her. Of course it’s not her. It’s Kalinda, telling him her shift is over and she’s going home. He wishes her a good night, she closes the door and he’s alone again.

He doesn’t see Kate either the day after that. He has to deal with an issue with one of their shipments and by the time he’s done, he’s so annoyed and frustrated that going to the bar and drinking would just make an even bigger asshole out of him, so he just sprawls out on the office couch and leans his head back, feeling the headache building behind his eyes.

Richie barges in not even ten minutes later, arguing loudly on the phone, and Seth wonders why they didn’t get separate offices. 

Richie hangs up a few minutes later, pours two glasses of scotch, and gives one to Seth even though he didn’t ask for anything.

“You gonna explain what that was?” Seth says as he sits up and takes the glass.

“The tequila guy is trying to rip us off.”

“Yeah, nothing new here.”

“We need to find a new supplier.”

“Have fun with that,” Seth says, raising his glass in a mock toast.

“And you need to put Kate on the bar rota.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Why? She doesn’t have to work to live here.”

“She asked me to. She wants something to do and since we don’t need a private hitman—woman—for now, bartending is the next best option.”

“Alright, fine.”

Kalinda and Luisa welcome Kate behind the counter and show her everything there is to know about the inner workings of the bar. Seth doesn’t interject much and Kalinda and Luisa definitely don’t need him to be here, but he has an inventory to do so he stays and pretends not to watch them as he scribbles on his notepad.

Kate observes and nods and replicates Luisa’s movements at the beer tap. She listens to Kalinda’s explanation on how to make cocktails with the same determination on her face that she had back in Mexico when he was taught to her how to properly clean and oil a gun, how to force a lock, how to drive a getaway car.

“Do you have any questions?” Kalinda asks.

“Not for now,” Kate replies.

Luisa grins. “Good. Now for the true test,” she says then turns to him. “Turn around.”

Seth raises an eyebrow. “I’m in the middle of the inventory, Lu,” he replies with a wave of his notepad. “I’m sure that whatever it is you plan on doing, I’m not gonna see.”

Luisa rolls her eyes and huffs, then she takes a couple of bottles and goes to the other end of the counter, as far away from him as possible.

A few minutes later, just as he is wondering what they should do to make people drink more rum in a way that doesn’t involve fucking mojitos, Kalinda calls him over.

He raises his head from his inspection of the shelves. “What?”

“We need your opinion,” Kate says.

He squints. “Sounds like a trap.”

Kate and Luisa roll their eyes. Then Luisa moves to the side, revealing three identical glasses sitting on the countertop. He sighs, puts down his notepad and joins them.

“What’s this?”

“A blind test,” Luisa says.

“We each made one,” Kalinda adds. 

“See if you can pick up the one I mixed,” Kate finishes.

“Sounds like y’all are trying to get me drunk.”

“I don’t need a ploy to get you drunk, _Jefe_. This is for educational purposes,” Luisa replies with a smirk.

Seth huffs a laugh and shakes his head, then braces himself against the counter and observes the glasses. They all look identical, perfectly square ice cubes at the bottom, half filled with amber liquid and garnished with an orange peel.

He takes a sip of the first one, then drinks the water Luisa pushes in his hand, then repeats the motions with the second and third.

“So?” Kate asks when he has tasted them all.

He points at the glass on the left. “You did that one.”

“That bad, uh?”

He smirks. “Luisa did this one,” he says as he pokes the glass in the middle. “And this one is Kalinda’s,” he finishes as he points at the last glass. 

“Damn, you’re good,” Luisa says.

“Wanna know how I know?” he asks and crosses his arms. Kate nods. “Luisa is a bit heavy handed on the bitters. Kalinda squeezes more orange in it.”

“So you didn’t recognize mine because it doesn’t taste good?”

“Nope.” He uncrosses his arms, grabs the glass on the left and knocks it back. “It’s good,” he says as he puts the glass back down. “Don’t sweat it, Princess. The only thing you truly need to know here is how to pour beer and tequila shots.”

Seth would be lying if he said that he isn’t worried about Kate bartending. He doesn’t doubt her abilities, of course not, but he remembers what she said to him, up on the roof, all too clearly. 

_Not a big fan of crowds._

He knows she’s come a long way since the first time she stayed here after Matanzas, but he can’t help the way his eyes trail after her behind the counter. Some nights are quiet, but most nights aren’t, the place is crowded and bustling with drunk people amassing three-deep at the counter to drink some more. 

It would be easy for her to get overwhelmed, feel trapped.

She tells him she’s fine and she breezes past him, balancing cocktails and shots and pints, smiling at patrons, joking with Kalinda and hip-checking Luisa at the beer taps. 

He wants to believe her.

Those nights where they’re swamped and he has to do several supply runs and she moves effortlessly behind the counter, she looks like she belongs here. She knows Richie’s favorite cocktail and she always deals with Marney when he orders so Kalinda doesn’t have to.

So he believes her.

He keeps an eye on her because _of course_ , but he doesn’t hover. Much.

It’s one of those busy nights and Seth feels like he’s been doing nothing but running to the back to get more tequila, more whisky, more crates of beer bottles—they have six different kinds of beer on tap, why the fuck are these people ordering Dos Equis?—but Kate and Kalinda seem to be keeping up with the hollering patrons.

He’s in the back yet again when he hears a man yell and then shout something about a bitch and yeah, that’s never good. Diego, Dorian and Miguel are on the security detail tonight so he’s not too worried, though. It’s not killing rogue culebras, but they’re good at being bouncers. 

He comes back behind the counter just in time to see a pissed off Kate knock back a shot while Kalinda watches her while biting her lower lip. The patrons closest to the bar are also looking at Kate in that noisy yet impressed way people have when something just went down.

“The fuck just happened?” he asks as he puts his crate down under the counter.

Kate refills her glass and glances at him but doesn’t answer.

“Some asshole just grabbed Kate,” Kalinda says. 

Seth clenches his teeth. “What?” He steps closer to Kate. “Are you okay?”

She rolls her eyes and swallows her second shot. “I broke his fingers,” she replies with a little grimace, but other than that he can’t see how it affected her.

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“I handled it.” She caps the bottle and puts it back on the shelf. “Diego and Dorian threw him out. Everything is fine.”

Then she just turns back to the other side of the counter and asks for a guy’s order like the whole thing is already forgotten.

“Everything is fine?” he repeats in an incredulous way. He’s aware that he might be standing too close to her and that he might be slightly overreacting but he also doesn’t give a fuck. “You had to break that guy’s fingers, Kate! Everything is _not_ fine!”

She rolls her eyes and steps around him to get to the beer tap. “I didn’t outright kill him, Seth, or ask one of the guys to eat him, so we’re good, alright?” she says as she starts filling a pint.

She has a point. He knows she does, but it doesn’t mean he has to like it. He clenches his fists and is about to protest some more when she just puts a hand on his chest and looks at him heads on.

“Seth, I can handle myself. Stop freaking out and deal with your goddamn bar. Kalinda and I are fucking swamped here.”

He takes a deep breath, forces his fists to relax and his mind to calm the fuck down. 

Kate takes her pints and gives them to the guy, then leans over the counter to hear someone else’s order. 

He sighs, scratches his jaw, then turns to the crowd of people pressing against the counter. 

He can be reasonable about this. He absolutely can.

There are no mojito or Long Island Iced Tea or other bullshit cocktail orders, but they still don’t have the time to take any breaks the rest of shift. All three of them are running between the counter and the beer tap, the counter and the bottle shelf, passing bottles back and forth, slicing more lemon wedges than is needed for their current order of tequila shots so they have some ready for the next one, washing empty glasses as fast as they can and piling ice and juggling salt shakers and more glasses.

And if he does all that while keeping an eye for more potential assholes, well it’s called multitasking and it’s a very useful skill to have.

“Seth, I will punch you,” Kate growls at him after she gives someone their drinks just next to the corner where he is preparing a tray of tequila shots.

He raises an eyebrow at her because for once he didn’t do or say anything. She glares at him and he can’t help but smile because he has no idea what this is about but she’s way too cute when she’s pissed. 

“Are they fighting or flirting?” someone asks from the other side of the counter. Seth glances up at the same time as Kate turns around.

Richie and Marney have somehow managed to make their way through the crowd. Richie smirks. “Both.”

Kate glares at him one last time before going to Richie and Marney and Seth decides to ignore his brother to finish his current order. He sees them talking from the corner of his eye, but can’t hear their conversation over the noise in the bar. Given how smug Richie looks, Seth is sure he’s not missing on much.

Then Kalinda turns to him with pleading eyes and mouths “mojitos”. He rolls his eyes, starts dealing with the mint and wonders if he should just make a sign forbidding mojitos altogether.

He is dead on his feet by the end of his shift. Kalinda mixes him an old fashioned that he takes to his room, and he sits heavily at his desk, removing his gun from the back of his jeans and putting it on top of a pile shipment manifests. Why he has manifests and reports in his room, he doesn’t know. He has a goddamn office for that.

He sips his drink while relishing the fact that he isn’t on his feet anymore. When he’s done, he clears the table and disassembles his gun.

Which is precisely when Kate barges in without knocking. He’s about to make a joke about seeing something she doesn’t want to see one of these days if she keeps this up, but she speaks before he can.

“Get up.”

He glances up. She’s pissed, _again_. “What are you doing?” he asks her and he just wants to clean his gun and go the fuck to sleep. Preferably with her in his arms, which doesn’t look like it’s going to happen because she crosses her arms and glares at him like she wants to murder him. He probably shouldn’t find it sexy, but here he is.

“You don’t think I can take care of myself.”

And okay, what the _fuck._ He puts down his rag and the firing pin he was just cleaning. “What?”

“You don’t think I can take care of myself,” she repeats, the challenge clear in her voice.

He frowns. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

She raises her eyebrows and looks even more pissed than before. He’s pretty sure that if he was a culebra she would’ve shot him already. “Really? You’re gonna play dumb?”

He closes his eyes, pinches the bridge of his nose. He would like to know what the hell is going on in his life, but he’s never been that lucky. “I’m not playing dumb,” he says. “I have no goddamn clue what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about the fact that you shadowed me the entire night like I need a goddamn bodyguard.”

He stares at her as the words make their way into his brain. And _really_? That’s what this is about? Because he freaked out a little after she _broke a guy’s fingers_? Because he was watching the crowd after that?

He throws his arms in the air. “Some asshole grabbed you, Kate!”

“Yeah! And I broke his fucking fingers without your fucking help!” she replies, louder than before. 

He stands up. “I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t going to happen again! What’s so fucking wrong with that?”

“I don’t need you to be my knight in shining armor, especially not at the fucking bar!” she shouts, pointing in the direction of the bar.

“I just wanted to make sure you were safe!” he shouts right back.

She doesn’t throw anything back at him. She crosses her arms and stares at him like she’s evaluating what he just said. He wants to get closer, soothe the frown line between her eyebrows, make her understand that it’s not that he thinks she’s weak, fuck knows she’s the furthest thing from that, it’s just that he feels too much when it comes to her, that he’s not rational, no matter how much he tries to be.

“Gym,” she says calmly. “Ten minutes.” 

Then she turns around and stalks out of the room.

“What?” he calls after her, utterly confused, but she’s already gone.

He rubs at his face and sighs and wishes he had another drink while also knowing he shouldn’t drink more. He needs as much control as possible when dealing with her, otherwise he’s just going to spill everything at her and he can’t have that. 

He wonders why the hell she wants him to join her at the gym. He briefly considers changing out of his work clothes and into some sweatpants, but decides against it. He’s in no shape to work out or do anything athletic at the moment, so whatever it is that she wants to do, it’ll have to happen in jeans.

He walks out of his room and in the direction of the gym.

“I don’t know what you did, brother, but your girl is pissed,” Richie says when he passes him in the hallway.

“Not my girl,” Seth mutters, not stopping to suffer his brother’s idea of a conversation.

“Really?” Richie calls after him. “Could’ve fooled me.”

Seth gives him the finger and continues on his way, Richie’s snickering following him. 

Kate is already there when he arrives at the gym.

“Care to explain?” he asks with an arm wave that is supposed to encompass the gym, their presence here, this entire goddamn situation.

She rolls her shoulders and cracks her neck. “Fight me,” she says.

He blinks. “Excuse me?”

“Fight. Me,” she repeats, getting into a fighting stance and no. Oh _hell_ no. 

He crosses his arms. “I’m not gonna fight you, Kate,” he says, trying to sound stern and firm.

“Why? Are you afraid I’ll kick your ass?” she says, glaring at him like he personally kicked her puppy. Or Miguel.

“No, I just don’t see the fucking point.”

And it’s also a recipe for a disaster. Because he knows what she looks like when she fights and he is definitely not strong enough not to make a fool of himself if he tries to go toe to toe with her.

He might not sound as categorical and as firm as he hoped to be, because she steps closer, still not dropping her stance. 

“Maybe if you fight me, you’ll realize you don’t need to babysit me,” she says, low and threatening. A chill runs down his spine and yep, he’s definitely not fighting her if hearing that voice gives him that kind of reaction.

He swallows, screws his eyes shut and rubs his forehead, trying to get his body’s reaction under control and is so blessedly glad Kate’s too pissed off at him to notice. “For fuck’s sake,” he mutters. 

She’s not going to let it go and if he stays one more minute in this room, he doesn’t know what he’s going to do. 

So he just turns around and walks back to the door.

“Hey!” she shouts behind him.

“I’m not doing that,” he says without stopping or turning.

“Come back here!”

“G’night, Princess!”

He power walks to his room, locks the door and makes a beeline for the bathroom.

He needs a _cold_ shower.

[ ](https://tuntematonkorppi.tumblr.com/post/645644648619130880/what-does-it-matter-how-my-heart-breaks-part-iii)


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